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THE BEING OF GOD 



MORAL GOVERNMENT 



AOT> 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 



BY MILES P. SQITIER, D. D. 



LATH PROFESSOR OP INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHY, 
BELOIT COLLEGE, WISCONSIN. 



EDITED 



BY REV. JAMES R. BOYD. 



ROCHESTER, N. Y.: 
E. DARROW & KEMPSHALL, 

1868. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by- 
Catherine S. Squier, in the Clerk's office of the District 
Court of the United States in and for the North- 
ern District of New York. 



-bo V*- 



Stereotyped ana Printed by R. L. Adams & Son, Geneva, N. Y. 



PREFATORY NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 



The principal writings of Dr. Squier are "The Problem 
Solved," published in 1855; "Reason and the Bible," (or 
the Truth of Religion,) in 1860, and his "Autobiography 
and Miscellaneous Writings, " in 1867, one year after his 
lamented death. The volume now offered to the public, is 
the last that will appear. It was committed by the author 
on his death-bed to the charge of the Editor for revision 
and publication. It is matter of sincere regret to the latter 
that the revision could not have been made in the author's 
life-time and submitted to him for approval. The work, es- 
pecially in some of its chapters, was found to stand in need 
of some correction, both in the way of omission, and of ad- 
dition, in order to make it more perspicuous and acceptable 
to the general reader. Besides some verbal changes of less 
moment, the words or clauses supplied are generally includ- 
ed in brackets, and the utmost pains have been taken to 
express the author's ideas in the most exact and accurate 
manner, such as it is believed would have entirely met his 
approval and sanction. 

Another part of the Editor's labor, has been the prepar- 
ation of the Analysis, which it is conceived may be found 
useful, especially should the volume be employed, as the 
author earnestly hoped and expected that it might be, as a 
Text Book in the Higher Institutions of learning. 

The first part of the volume, treating with great acumen 
and originality upon the Being of God, was given by the 
author himself to the press a few weeks before he died, 
though it was not published until the month following his 



IV PREFATORY NOTE BT THE EDITOR. 

death, in the Presbyterian Quarterly and Theological Ee- 
view for July, 1866. He designed it to accompany the 
treatise on Moral Government, of which indeed it forms a 
most appropriate introduction. 

The author attached great importance to the doctrines 
he has maintained in relation to Moral Government, and 
conceived some of them to be in advance of the age; and, 
though antagonistic to many theological theories now in 
vogue, he anticipated the adoption and the prevalence of 
his own views in their stead, at no very distant period. 
"Whatever estimate may be put upon the soundness or im- 
portance of those views, there can be no doubt as to the 
great value of the book, in suggesting original thoughts, 
and in affording to the student no inconsiderable amount of 
mental discipline. 

It has been judged expedient to reprint the Theses in 
Theology, that were published among the Miscellaneous 
Writings of the author a year ago, forming Part III of the 
present volume. They may be found very useful in the 
elucidation of some points in Part II that may have been 
too concisely treated. It is suggested also, that the pre- 
vious volume of the author, entitled "Eeason and Eeve- 
lation," may with great advantage be read in connection 
with the one now offered to the public, for the sake of se- 
curing a more complete view of some of the topics herein 
presented. 

With the fond hope, and the earnest prayer to the God 
of truth, the moral Euler of the Universe, that this volume 
may be made greatly subservient to the progress of moral 
and theological science, and may thus promote the highest 
welfare of mankind, it is now commended to the candid 
examination and study of all who are interested in discus- 
sions of this nature, and especially to those who are con- 
nected with Collegiate and Theological Institutions. 

Geneva, if. T. J. E. B. 



ANALYSIS. 



PART I. 

THE BEING OF GOD. 

The existence of God, a fundamental subject of thought. 
The subject, imperfectly treated in past discussions by 
its friends. Reference to Sir William Hamilton's state- 
ment, and to Dr. Mansel's "Limits of Eeligious Thought," 
as encouraging "Positive Science," and Philosophical In- 
fidelity. Reason and conscience should not be put in an- 
tagonism to each other. Religion in its chief elements, 
not beyond the limits of human thought. False humility 
to say we cannot know God. St. Paul's statement, show- 
ing that ignorance of God is inexcusable. Pkoofs of the 
Being of God. 1. Something is— proved by the testimony 
of reason, of consciousness, and of the senses. 2. Effects 
are. Matter is an effect of something outside of and inde- 
pendent of itself. Mind is cause per se and yet but limited 
and dependent cause. 3. Something always was. This.fol- 
lows from the fact that something is. The existent sup- 
poses the ever-existent. Paul reasoned from the creation 
to an eternal Power. 4. The always-being is eternal cause. 
It can in no sense be an effect. Eternal existence, as 
original cause, is an ultimate idea. 5. The always-being, 
the eternal cause is intelligent cause. Mind only is cause, 
and is seen to be cause by the dictate of consciousness. 6. 
The always-being is righteous cause. [1] Rectitude is the 
normal mode and state of the intelligence every where. 
[2] Sin can be only by apostacy from right. But in abso- 
lute cause there is no opportunity, ground, or possibility 
of change or apostacy. [3. J Malevolence would be with- 
out an object in original absolute cause. [4] Mind is 



VI ANALYSIS. 

made for truth and truth adapted to it. 7. The always- 
being is infinite cause. Nothing ean limit it. It is im- 
possible for us fully to grasp the contents embraced in 
infinite cause. Our conceptions rise from the known to 
the unknown. The infinite is a conception of the pure 
reason. The infinite is the normal type of being. 8. The 
always-being is self-existent, perfect being, depending on 
nothing else. The great first cause has no element of deca- 
dence or change. 9. The always-being is God, the personal 
Jehovah, with all the attributes and prerogatives of the 
Godhead. This is clearly seen in the light of the intelli- 
gence itself. Personality resides in the will, and this is 
cause, the only cause. The "I am" of Moses, a most 
descriptive appellation. The existence of God is no where 
made the subject of a verbal revelation. How this is. Fi- 
nite mind, an emanation from the infinite, and like it in 
its properties. The power to know God, indispensable to 
both intelligence and morality. Sir William Hamilton 
and others mistake the relations of faith Page 19 



PART II. 

MOEAL GOVEENMENT. 

INTEODUCTION. 

Moral science, among the ultimate studies of the human 
mind. How its study has been extended. Its obligation 
to European scholars. Theology yet an immature science, 
and stands in need of an advanced moral science 47 

CHAPTEE I. 

PBELIMINARY CONSEDEEATIONS. 

[a] There are two spheres of existence — the physical and the 
intellectual. How distinguished. Should be looked at 
in the concrete, [b] The physical, except as related to the 
spiritual^ is excluded from present inquiry, [c] Of spirit, 



ANALYSIS. Vll 

there are two spheres — the infinite and the finite. The 
latter, dependent on the former. We may know that that 
is, which we cannot comprehend, [d] The finite is. [e] 
The finite suggests the infinite. [/] The infinite is cause. 
\g] Only intelligence is cause, [h] God is intelligent cause. 
[i] God is a perfect intelligent cause, [j] The infinite 
and the finite are related to each other, and certain rights, 
duties, &c. , grow out of their mutual relations. [Jc] The 
dignity of the subject 49 



CHAPTEE H. 

MOKAL GOVERNMENT — WHAT IT IS. 

[a] Two kinds of government — physical and moral. ]b] The 



nature, adaptations and limits of the first, [c] Moral gov- 
ernment correlates with intelligence, [d] Why called mor- 
al, [e] Its characteristics. [/] In its probationary stage 
it is an economy of moral influences — subjective and ob- 
jective, [g] In this stage it is resistible, [h] Here the 
supremacy of God is resultant and eventual in the sphere 
of free-will. Finite cause has its province of freedom. 
[i] The will of God may not always transpire, and that 
may be which God in no sense wills, [j] Moral Govern- 
ment may be abused, [k] A divine moral system is a per- 
fection. [I] The correlates of Moral Government 53 



CHAPTER HI. 

MOEAL GOVERNMENT — WHERE IT IS. 

[a] The Being of God is the source of Moral Government. 
[b] God as an infinite and absolute personality is the 
rightful source of authority, [c] God, a Power compe- 
tent to rule, [d] Created intelligence, fitted to appreciate 
and obey him. [e] The existence of God and of created 
intelligent beings being given, moral Government of 
course is. [f] The Divine moral system not a choice of 
systems, but a divine perfection, [g] The subject argued 
subjectively, [h] A failure in results at any point could 
not lead to an abandonment of the system. [*] Moral 
Government has mutual adaptation, [j] It is an inher- 
ent excellency. \Jc\ Its ultimate triumph and glory. . . 57 



Vlll ANALYSIS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — HOW ADMINISTERED. 

[d] It is in the sphere of the supernatural, [b] It is in the 
commerce of mind and truth, [c] It is a sphere of duties 
and of rights, [d] It involves rewards and penalties. 
\e\ It is a sphere of free-will. [/] It provides legitimate- 
ly for character and destiny. [#] It has probation and 
retribution. \K\ Its method is by the administration of 
law, in a three-fold way. [i\ An economy of grace may 
intervene, [j | This last may be a wisdom and a glory. 
[k] The demands of morality must thereby be sustained. 
\l] The administration of moral government will be a 
morality, and also a finality 60 

CHAPTER V. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — THE RELATIONS OF THE INFINITE TO IT. 

[a] The authorship of the created. Time denned. The 
only method of creation is that which is revealed. [6] 
Sustentation of the created. Derived existence must be 
dependent. Derived intelligence is nevertheless a cause 
in itself in its own sphere. Matter and mind are sustain- 
ed according to the nature of each, [c] The Divine right 
to the creation, [d] God's complete authority in respect 
to it. Adaptations of Divine rule. |e] Supremacy over 
it, righteous. How maintained. [/] Judgment — general 
and particular, [g] Final allotments to the righteous and 
to the wicked 63 



CHAPTER VI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — RELATIONS OF THE FINITE TO IT. 

[a] Moral relations apply to intelligent beings only. \b\ 
Derived intelligences owe allegiance to Divine Moral Gov- 
ernment, [c] Specific forms of duty involved in this 
allegiance. \d] Unity of the first and second Tables of 
the Law. [e] Relations to God, how modified by the 
apostasy. No divine right abrogated 67 



ANALYSIS. IX 

CHAPTER VH. 

THE EUIjE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

The Bible presents its subjects of thought mostly in the 
concrete form. All human study attended with imperfec- 
tion. Theology and religious creeds, how modified, and 
liable to mistakes. The Bible and its philosophy. Moral 
Science is inclusive of Theology, and is still a progressive 
science. It involves three topics — the ultimate moral 
rule, the characteristics of a moral system, and the ulti- 
mate end of a moral administration 70 

I. The ultimate Moral Rule. — Objective and subjective the- 
ories. Mistake on the rule is fundamental. [1] It cannot 
be an acquisition properly. It must be inherent. Anal- 
ogy with the five senses. Reference to the brute creation. 
[2] The Rule is substantive in its nature — it is in us and 
of us. Indispensable to personality. The moral sense is 
a unique attribute, like reason, &c. It has its prototype 
in the Infinite. It is homogeneous in God, Angel, and 
Man. Differences in its dictates accounted for. The prov- 
ince of instruction. Difficulty in the application of the 
Rule. [3] The ultimate Rule is moral in its nature, and 
has respect to moral relations. Demands rectitude. Wis- 
dom and beneficence of God in bestowing this Rule 
[or moral sense.] Necessity of a perfect standard of 
right 72 

CHAPTER Vm. 

APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

Moral Government relates to those who have reason, con- 
science, and free-will. [1] It respects intelligent beings. 
[2] It has respect to the question of responsibility in 
those to whom it relates. [3] Its function is at the point 
of voluntary action and its issues. [4] It claims a perfect 
righteousness. [5] It is in itself and its principle a right- 
eousness. [6] It must also be an appreciable righteous- 
ness. It must exhibit no complicity with wrong. The 
difficulty with God's earthly unfinished Providence. The 
philosophy of history. The teachings of our intuitions 
conformed to a divine moral government. [7] Moral Gov- 
ernment has Probation and Retribution. Probation may 
be that of Law or of Grace. Retribution, inherent in 



X ANALYSIS. 

moral government. [8] Under moral government that 
may occur which is every way discordant with its design. 
The possibility of wrong. That feature of a moral gov- 
ernment which renders sin possible, is its excellency and 
glory. [9] The Supremacy of God is of the nature of a 
resultant issue. The freedom of the finite in its sphere is 
like the freedom of the infinite in his. Purposes have 
a personal reference — to one's own acts. The govern- 
mental supremacy of God over finite will is necessarily 
indirect. [10] Moral Government has discretion over the 
amount of means it will employ for recovering men from 
sin. Sin is in no sense according to the will of God. 
Mercy is not obligatory 85 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE END IN MOEAL GOVEKNMENT. 

Important to settle the true end in a moral system. Differ- 
ent theories designed to reconcile the facts of the universe 
with the demands of morality. [1] Is happiness the ulti- 
mate end? It is so in physical and sentient existence, but 
not in the sphere of moral relations. Objections to the 
theory that happiness is the ultimate end in the latter. 
An appeal to our conscious convictions; also to scripture. 
[2] Is the glory of God the ultimate end? Objections to 
this view. It imputes selfishness to God. It regards all 
beings beside God as merely a means, and reduces men to 
the condition of things. It depiives us of respect for 
God. To make one's happiness or glory an ultimate end, 
must be accounted an unworthiness. This principle, ap- 
plicable alike to the Infinite and the Finite. [3] Is then 
the greatest good the ultimate end in moral action? The 
phrase is equivocal. [4j What is the ultimate end? 1. It 
is of the nature of morality. 2. It is a spiritual rectitude. 
Righteousness is an ultimate thing — the highest good— 
and the true principle on which moral government should 
be administered. In what lies the glory of God?. . . . 102 

Obvious Conclusions — [1] The unity and simplicity of the 
principles of the moral sphere and of their legitimate ac- 
tion. [2] A divine moral Government is appreciable by 
the finite. The character of God must be perfect, and seen 
to be so. God is not the proponent of sin as a part of 



ANALYSIS. XI 

the Divine plan. [3] The good which follows wrong is 
through opposition to it. All good in relation to it, is in 
remedy of it and in repair of its evils. [4] There is no 
good reason for the existence of sin — none that can sat- 
isfy God. If there be, what absurdities will follow. [5] 
God has a discretionary sovereignty, within the limits of 
all righteousness, in his treatment of sin. He is not re- 
sponsible for sin or its mischiefs. His antagonism to it. 
God, not obliged always to do all he can to prevent sin or 
to remedy it. [6] The terms of a Divine glory out of sin. 
The conditions upon which alone glory can be ascribed to 
Him for his methods with sin. [7] The harmony of moral 
truth as seen in its theoretic statement and in its develop- 
ment. The appropriate aim and great duty of man . . 102 

CHAPTER X. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — ITS CONSUMMATION, 

[a] Two kingdoms — that of right, and that of wrong. These, 
every way antagonistic to each other, [c] This antagonism 
appears with various results in the probationary stage of 
the economy, [d] The final success of the right, and 
why. [e] Divine power in retribution, not suasory and 
resistible in its methods. [/] Divine communications on 
the subject. [ g] Final state of the unrecovered — physi- 

. cal and moral, [h] Final state of the righteous. Heaven 
as a place and as a state, [i] Perpetuity of the state of 
the lost and of the saved. To form character and reap 
destiny, the all of a moral system, [j ] The number of 
the lost, not ascertainable. The resources and influences 
of moral government increase with the progress of the 
ages. Confirmation of the good in holiness. ]k] Final re- 
lations of Christ to the universe. [I] The influence of the 
"Divine-human " on other orders of creation 129 



CHAPTER XI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO THE GLORY OP GOD. 

[a] Glory, a tribute rendered rather than an end sought. 

b] Created intelligences are needful to bestow it. [c] 

! Self-respect and due regard to one's reputation a legiti- 



Xll ANALYSIS. 



mate principle in a moral system, [d] The glory of God 
lies essentially in his righteousness, [e] Hence the basis 
of the divine glory as seen in all his works in the uni- 
verse. [/] The glory of a moral system, [g] The glory 
of the moral universe 134 



CHAPTEK Xn. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO THE HIGHEST GOOD. 

\a\ Two ends may be contemplated in a moral system — a 
happiness, and a righteousness. These, how distinguish- 
ed, [b] The two may not always be antagonistical. [c] 
Happiness as an end is proper only when consistent with 
righteousness, [d] Happiness is the subordinate end — 
and consequent upon right action, [e] This is the order 
as consistent with conscious activities of mind. \f j Hap- 
piness in moral beings is properly an incidental end. (Vj 
Inherent in the good that lies in right action, [h] The 
highest good is moral goodness or righteousness, [i] 
Writers have sought to combine both ends in one . . . 137 

CHAPTER XHL 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO THE INTELLECTUAL 
POWERS. 

\a] Two forms of being — the physical and the intellectual. 
[b] The intellectual embraces the cognitive, sensitive, and 
voluntary element, [c] Likeness of the Divine and of the 
human intellect. How shown, [d] The adaptation of 
man's intellectnal powers (including the intellect proper, 
the conscience and the will,) to the methods of moral 
government, [e] Moral Government, adapted to promote 
growth of mind and knowledge. [/J All virtue and ex- 
cellence is possible to mind 140 

CHAPTER XIY. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO HUMAN ABILITY. 

la] Two spheres of being — the natural, and the supernatural. 
[b] The first is simple effect; the second is inherent cause. 



ANALYSIS. Xlii 

[c] Finite intelligence though dependent for its being, is 
conscious cause like its Author. How this appears, [d] 
The subdivision into natural and moral ability, unphilo- 
sophical. \e\ To the sovereignty of personal will moral 
government is adapted 143 



CHAPTER XV. 

MOEAL GOVERNMENT — AS BELATED TO THE PREVENTION OF SIN. 

[a] Where God and created beings are, there is moral gov- 
ernment. [5] The nature, capabilities and results of 
moral government, [c] Hence appears its glory, [d] All 
intelligence has its prerogatives. [e\ Sin, in wrong choice, 
is an inherent liability in a moral system. \f] How sin 
will first occur. [g] Sin, having commenced, will follow 
the laws of habit. Original sin described, [k] Moral 
government supposes a liability to sin. Irrelevant to ask 
why is not all sin prevented. \i] The character of God 
is not implicated in the breaking out of sin. Sin is against 
the will, and without the permission of God. [j] The 
origin of sin, fully accounted for in the doctrine of per- 
sonal cause. Sin, not to be resolved into the ' ' the secret 
will of God." \k] Moral Government has more resources 
for the cure and putting down of sin than for its utter 
prevention at first. How sin occurs at first. Mind and 
truth are correlates. The gospel is true, and must make 
progress. [I] Sin would not be likely to occur except in 
the outset of a moral economy. It is the offspring of in- 
experience, &c. Practice in virtue gives confirmation. 
Examples, [m] Sin is no co-ordinate, but only a possible 
alternative of a moral system, [ri] Sin is no matter of 
Divine arrangement or decree. Sin is no strategy of the 
Deity — for three reasons, [o] God will bring good out of 
evil, [p] The conditions of this, [q] As sin is a liability, 
when it occurs it may be treated providentially and ju- 
dicially for the good of the universe, [r] Moral govern- 
ment will at last succeed against sin in the way of retri- 
bution, [s] Moral Government in its actual sway and 
command may never be universal over freewill. Lost 
spirits in hell will not in temper be subdued. [I] The 
number of the lost will probably in the end be compara- 
tively few. \u\ God infinitely happy, notwithstanding the 
existence of sin '. 174 



XIV ANALYSIS. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO PERSONAL RECOVERY 
FROM SIN. 

Eleven particulars are given 182 

CHAPTER XVII. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT— AS RELATED TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 

I. Depravity and natural state. — Apostasy vacated the econ- 
omy of legal obedience. Induced a propensity to sin. 
The primary seat of depravity, the will. The constituent 
elements of our being continue with us notwithstanding 
the fall. Proclivity to evil may be inherited— the fruit of 
disobedience. Proclivity is only a temptation to sin, the 
indulgence of it is sin. " Native Depravity " as a state. 
Depravity as a life and a responsibility. " Total " or en- 
tire " Depravity." How moral government regards sinful 
man „ 184 

H. Regeneration.— -May be regarded as a state or an act or 
work done. These described. This work has its divine 
and its human side, and relations. The philosophy of re- 
generation. Divine help necessary. In regeneration, no 
new faculty communicated. We are conscious of no in- 
fluence but in view of truth. A new habit or proclivity- 
is formed. Regeneration, not a miracle, but an intelli- 
gent and accountable process of mind. This change is 
fitly required of us 18? 

III. Justification. — Necessity of an atonement. The sinner 
cannot be justified on ground of personal merit. A sense 
of our demerit is inevitable. The divine and the human 
side of justification. It is next in order to repentance 
and faith. The meritorious ground of it. Rescue, by 

i substituted suffering. Atonement need not be the same 
in kind or duration with the penalty. It may be more 
than a bare equivalence for the penalty of law 190 

IV. Sanctification.— Regeneration continued and perfected — 
a progressive victory over sin — a process of activity in 
us" and by us — under the guidance of truth and the 
spirit of God — a self-confirming process — an intelligent 
process 193 



ANALYSIS. XV 

V. Perseverance of Saints.— Definition. The result of the 
preceding process. How opposed. How effected. How 
the result is expedited. Arguments in favor. Confirma- 
tion and perpetuity in a given course become the law 
of mind eventually 195 

VI. Reprobation. — Probation and retribution essential. Per- 
sistence in wrong eventually forbids reformation. Repro- 
bation as a divine act explained. The condition of the 
lost irremediable. To God an unwelcome result. . . . o 196 

VIE. Final State of the Lost. — That of confirmed rebellion, 
despondency, remorse. That of physical control and 
confinement, and punishment. That of increasing de- 
pravity and degradation, and wretchedness in sin. The 
lost continue to be subjects of moral government. . . . 197 

VHT. Final State of the Saved.— Freedom from sin — active 
holiness — ever-increasing blessedness — one of perfect di- 
vine approval — of intellectual and social culture and en- 
joyment — of wide communion with the servants of God — 
eternal 199 

CHAPTER XVm. 

MOKAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO COMMON SENSE. 

Religion is and must be intuitional. It is a first truth in 
reason. ^ All truth is intuitionally apprehended in the di- 
vine mind, and in a measure by us, though certain helps 
and processes often become needful to the finite for that 
purpose. It is a mistake in theology to include statements 
that cannot be appreciated and admitted by the human 
intelligence. Mysteries in religion or in the" statement of 
religious doctrine must not compromit first principles of 
truth or belief. The future will enlarge our theology. 
Progress of the Gospel 200 

CHAPTER XIX. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — AS RELATED TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

God, the only original source of authority. Civil govern- 
ment, an ordinance of God. Hence subjection to it is a 
religious duty, A specific form is not enjoined. It will 
vary with progress of society. The aim and the defect of 



XVI ANALYSIS. 

of civil government. Civil Government should harmonize 
with the divine. The nations will yet be one, in certain 
respects. The Millennium 203 

CHAPTEE XX. 

MOEAIi GOVERNMENT — AS BELATED TO THE FAMILY CONSTITU- 
TION. 

The family state, a primeval arrangement of God. Its Ele- 
ments. The wisdom of it. Bights and Duties 206 

CONCLUSION. 

Design of preceding chapters. The principles of morals are 
the same in the underived and in the derived intelligence. 
Systems of theology, faulty at this point. Moral Govern- 
ment treated in this volume as lying wholly in the super- 
natural sphere. The advantages of this method. The har- 
mony of the philosophical and the positive in truth also 
shown. The great aim of this work 207 



PART III. 

THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

I. The Being of God 215 

II. The Perfections of God 216 

III. The Works of God 218 

IV. Moral Principles the co-ordinate of moral Being . . 219 

V. The Purposes of God 221 

VI. Mind inherently Cause, and self-conlrolled 223 

VII. The Method of the Deity 225 

VIII. A Moral System 227 

IX. Sin, not an expedient in the Divine Economy .... 230 

X. The Supremacy of God 235 

XI. The Terms of a completed Moral Science 237 

XII. The souls of men the result of the law of procrea- 
tion and descent, as their bodies are 241 

XIII. Does God form and arrange Temptations to Sin 
and wrong? 244 

XIV. The maintenance of the Supremacy of God in 
the moral sphere maintained 245 



PABT I. 



THE BEING OF GOD. 



THE BEING- OF GOD. 

The existence of God is a fundamental subject of 
thought. Nothing underlies it or goes before. All the- 
ology and moral science arise out of, and depend upon 
it. If God be not, then nothing is. All else must be 
resultant of him, and take on the postulate that he is. 
How can the finite be but by reason of the infinite, the 
created but by the uncreated, the dependent but by the 
independent, the conditioned but by the absolute and 
eternal? 

Investigations in theology and moral truth have been 
much at fault here. They have shown weakness and 
equivocation, where of right belonged manhood and 
strength. The subject has not had justice at the hands 
of its friends. We have failed in method and in co- 
gency of argument, in the reliability and comprehen- 
siveness of our positions, in the resources and complete- 
ness of our logic and convictions. We have felt as 
if the theory of truth here was involved and intricate ; 
as if the thread of the Sybil conducted us through dark 
and cavernous passages, and along by-ways which we 
knew not ; that there water was too deep for us, and 
that we must here pass from the sphere of knowledge 
into that of simple faith. 



20 TIIE BEING OF GOD. 

In this direction the English mind has taken the 
lead. Sir William Hamilton has formally stated " that 
the knowledge of God is impossible," in his article on 
the " Unconditioned " — a position which has been la- 
boriously supplemented by Dr. Mansel, of Oxford, in his 
Limits of Religious Thought. The natural effect of such 
counsels is to beleaguer conscience and embarrass faith, 
and set men free from the obligations of religion. And 
the seed has already borne its legitimate fruit. This is 
observable in the new impulses and encouragement 
of " Positive Science " on the one hand, and of philo- 
sophic atheism and infidelity on the other. What else 
could be expected ? Men will not forswear their intel- 
ligence. They will not be religious by prescription, or 
believe beyond the limits of rational conviction. They 
will not consent to this divorce between reason and 
faith ; and if attempted by those who should assist their 
faith, they will only choose their own alternative, and 
repudiate a creed that does not take the intellect into 
its conclusions, and build its economy of belief on those 
enduring principles and first truths which are common 
to all safe and satisfactory inquiry in other departments 
of knowledge. Indeed, the conscience should have 
special help here, in view of the " law in the members," 
warring against the "law in the mind." It is suicidal 
to put reason and conscience in antagonism, or reason 
and faith. And yet this has been the anomaly and per- 
turbation of our theology hitherto, and its false mission 
to the thinking classes of men. France turned infidel 
by reason of the unappreciable mummeries of the Rom- 
ish faith. The Tractarianism of Oxford gives ominous 



THE BEING OF GOD. 21 

s ; gns of a like reaction. Error germinates in the twi- 
light of conviction, and grows rank in the oscillations 
and tergiversations of truth. 

But why found religion in mysticism, and put its 
chief elements beyond the limits of human thought"? 
"Was it not designed for man, and man for it ? Should 
it not inhere in the principles of common sense, and be 
like the sunlight — for all, and adapted to all? It is 
false humility to say that we cannot know God, and 
that he cannot make himself known to us, and that the 
reason he has given us is not the offspring and counter- 
part of his own — made in his likeness, and adapted to 
intelligent correspondence with himself. 

St. Paul was a philosopher as well as a Christian ; 
and in a single sentence has he scattered to the winds 
all this timorousness and misgiving in respect to the ele- 
ments of religious belief, and brought the whole subject 
into relation to the human mind, and incorporated it 
among the legitimate subjects of our knowledge and 
conviction, and declared our ignorance of it to be with- 
out excuse. Rom. i. 20: "For the invisible things of 
,;Jdni (God) from the creation of the world are clearly 
seen, being understood by the things that are made, 
eve^n his eternal power and Godhead ; so that they are 
without excuse." This passage is very emphatic. Its 
statements and positions are comprehensive. Its aver- 
ments are characteristic aud unequivocal. They go 
the full length demanded for the proof of the being and 
perfections of God, and account the belief in God to be 
so obvious and obligatory in its apprehension and requi- 
sition, that the heathen even are inexcusable for not 



\ 



22 THE BEING OF GOD. 

recognizing the true Jehovah, and worshipping, loving 
and serving him as such. The apostle waits for no 
epecial economy to reveal God to his creatures, but pro- 
claims him manifested in his works, his being, his eter- 
nity and Godhead. All is clearly seen — intuitively be- 
held, and obviously implied and understood, in the 
legitimate apprehension of the mind from things that 
are made. " Eternal power " implies eternal existence ; 
that is, uncreated, absolute existence. And then there 
is the embodiment of the whole grand idea of the 
" Godhead," as manifested in his works, as clearly 
beheld, as undeniably apprehended and understood. 
The reference in the passage is to the one true God, 
with his divine perfections, as thus known in reason, 
and clearly seen by the intelligence — the invisible things 
of him — the eternal potentiality and proper "Godhead " 
of the Deity. 

On the basis here referred to, and in the light of the 
clear convictions of the apostle, we propose to give the 
proof of the being of God. 

1. Something is. This is the testimony of reason, of 
consciousness, and of the senses. There is infallible 
truth in this position. If I think, I am ; for only that 
which is, can think. How can we have secondary phe- 
nomena without the primary, or actions and words 
without being and thought ? 

We are conscious both of acting and of being. 
Some good writers have given up this last position, but 
without sufficient reason. There is in the soul a con- 
sciousness of existing as well as of acting, of being as 
well as behaving. This consciousness of self as being 



THE BEING OF GOD. 23 

and acting is infallible in its instruction, that something 
is — that we ourselves are, and have faculties and powers, 
convictions and feelings, intelligence, emotions and pas- 
sions, observation and experience. In no other way 
could knowledge be more infallible, or be possible inde- 
pendent of it ; and it is worse than idle to call in ques- 
tion the universal and necessary convictions of humani- 
ty on this point. 

The senses, too, are sure sources and media of instruc- 
tion ; and we distinguish the "me" from the " not 
me." The eye, the ear, the touch, the taste, the smell, 
all are channels of knowledge to us from an external 
world, and methods of our access to it and communion 
with it. Only by these and like ways could we be put 
in communication with material objects, and become 
cognizant of the universe around us. And this linking 
of the " me " to the " not me " of external nature is a 
wonderful economy, yet fully authenticated. 

Thus. we have various means of coming to the knowl- 
edge that something is. We are ; others are ; suns and 
planets are, and all the universal cosmos of created 
things. This we may affirm with the certainty of clear- 
ly apprehended truth, without troubling ourselves with 
speculations about the presentative or representative 
methods of inquiry. Science and common sense agree 
here. This conviction comes to us with a thousand 
voices, from within and without, as the universal lan- 
guage of humanity, so that we need not prolong an ar- 
gument in proof of that which every one feels and 
knows. 



24 THE BEING OP GOD. 

2. Effects are. We do not need to prove that man 
did not create the sun, or himself, or anything else. 
We know he did not. It is an undeniable position. 
And yet there are effects. The intelligence sees them 
to be so. Matter is ; and it is meted, bounded and lim- 
ited, and must have been meted, bounded and limited 
by what was outside and independent of itself. It is, 
because it was made to be, and was put into existence 
by a power before and extraneous to itself. It is, as it 
is, and where it is, by reason of something else. At 
most, it is but a " causa causata." We see it to be, and 
to contain only the " vis inertia" It is finite, and some 
being must have made it. It is a creation, and in itself 
an inert effect. Philosophy and common sense, reason 
and revelation, intelligence and the senses, agree in af- 
firming this. We arrive at it as surely as we do at the 
truth, that the whole is equal to the sum of its parts ; 
that matter exists in space, and events in time; and 
that he who acts, is. 

Men dive deeper than the truth sometimes, and show 
themselves more like muck-worms than philosophers. 
All science takes rise in the intuitions of the intelligence. 
Demonstration is in aid of intuitional apprehension. 
The first truths of reason need no demonstration ; they 
are intuitionally self-evident ; they are infallibly seen in 
the mind's own light. Why undertake to prove to me 
that which already is a matter of my own conscious- 
ness, or which exists with the certainty of infallibly 
implied truth in the dictates of the intelligence ? Why 
devote an argument to prove that matter exists in space, 
or that events occur in time, or that effects imply a 



THE BEING OF GOD. 25 

cause, or action an actor, or thinking a being that 
thinks ? 

Intuition is the test of truth, and the arbiter of knowl- 
edge. But for this, demonstration would be without 
conviction, and logic valueless and impossible. What 
satisfaction can we get from any efforts of logic beyond 
the insight of our minds, of the truth as reasoned out 
or stated ? Thus all knowledge and conviction, on the 
last analysis, arise out of, and are resolved into, intuitions. 
And they must begin in self-evident principles of truth. 
We apprehend them in the insight of the intelligence, 
and advance from them, and but for them advance 
would be impossible. They are not proved, but seen in 
their own light, by the insight of reason. 

This is not faith, though faith and trust in the things 
thus seen and signified is consequent and reasonable. 
It is not testimony to us, but apprehension by us. It is 
not testimony from the senses, but it is perception by 
them. It is apprehension and knowledge through them. 
It is the insight of the intelligence in the only possible 
way of consciousness and sense; and we believe the 
things thus made known, for the best of reasons, be- 
cause we see them to be true. We take testimony from 
others and use it for what it is worth, but here we see 
and have the original types and methods of knowledge, 
and give them credence as such. And we perceive that 
matter is effect, and recognize it as merely inert, un- 
conscious, impersonal effect, without sense or reason, 
and appropriate and use it as such. It is created, and 
not absolute in its being ; it is, because it was made to 
be, and could not have been otherwise ; and if we deny 



26 THE BEING OF GOD. 

the intuitions of mind in this, then is all knowledge im- 
possible, and science a misnomer from the beginning. 

So in the sphere of mind, though here we rise above 
nature, and take in the peculiar elements of the super- 
natural. Mind is cause per se, and yet but a limited, 
finite, created, dependent cause in us. It has no crea- 
tive power, and must itself have been created. It is it- 
self an effect, finite and dependent in its being and pow- 
er. It could not create one particle of the dust of the 
earth. It had a beginning, and a creation, and puts on 
all the types of dependence, responsibility and allegi- 
ance. It is consciously an effect, and humble in its de 
pendence, as the offspring of one who created and up- 
holds and sustains all things. 

3. Something always was. This follows infallibly from 
the fact that something is. How get the existent, 
without the ever-existent ? How get the effect, without 
the cause? The scale of dependent causes does not 
help you. You must reach an original cause, which is 
in no sense an effect. Any and all effects show this. The 
philosophic Paul saw this, and leaped at once, in his 
convictions and his argument, from the creation to an 
eternal Power, and with the utmost legitimacy and in- 
fallibility. We care not how difficulty may be the idea 
of the always being; it is inevitable. Either deny 
everything, or admit that. If effects are, there is eter- 
nal cause. If anything is, something always was. You 
get your whole doctrine from the least mote as com- 
pletely as from the largest universe. Nothing could be, 
unless something always was. That which had a begin- 
ning is an effectj and had a cause above and before it. 



THE BEING OF GOD. 2 < 

That which began, is by reason of that which did not 
begin. Dependence proves independence ; the derived, 
the underived ; the created, the uncreated and absolute. 
You must accept absolute, uncreated, eternal being, as 
the only stand-point for the existence of anything else. 
It is our inevitable postulate — if effects are the cre- 
ation is. But these are, and there is a cosmos. As you 
cannot deny the one, neither can you the other. The 
logic is inexorable, the philosophy without mistake, the 
insight of reason obvious and perfect. You get the de- 
rived finite, by means of the underived infinite. The 
always-being, is the necessary complement of the doctrine 
of every being, action and thought. You can have 
nothing, or think of nothing, that does not involve it. 
The full and adequate conception of the always-being, 
" without beginning of days or end of years," may not 
be expected of derived mind. We are an effect, and 
abide in the region and sphere of effects, and find it 
difficult to grasp that which is only cause, and itself un- 
caused. But that it is, admits of no doubt, "being 
clearly seen by things that are made " — and we repeat 
the thought. 

4. The always-being is eternal cause. The always ex- 
isting could be in no sense an effect, or find the reason 
and ground of its being in something else. Nothing 
else existed, to take on this relation to it. Its exist- 
ence, like that of duration and space, is from eternity 
to eternity, " the same yesterday, to-day and forever," 
and is inherent cause. Whatever else exists is origi- 
nated by this, and exists by its creative fiat. In the ex- 
istence of this, you reach the necessary ultimatum of 



28 THE BEING OF GOD. 

being, as cause of all conception concerning it. Noth- 
ing is possible or conceivable beyond. The ultimate 
idea is eternal existence, as eternal, original cause — the 
originator of all else ; but, itself without origination 
and without beginning, and like space and duration, 
boundless, ceaseless. It simply is, and acts. We may 
not, in our sphere of derived existence, and under the 
laws of thought that must obtain in the region of cause 
and effect, be able to gain the full contents of such ex- 
istence ; but that it is, we infallibly know. We get it 
as a first truth of reason, from the laws of the intelli- 
gence, and the inevitable logic of the case. More we 
could not hare ; less there could not be, if even a mote 
or an atom exists. 

5. The ahvmjs-being, the eternal cause, is intelligent 
cause. Matter exists only as effect : its " vis inertia " is 
proved by the insight of reason and the senses. Mind 
only is cause, and is seen to be cause, by the dictate of 
consciousness. It may be dependent for its being, as 
in the case of finite, derived mind, but has in it the ele- 
ments of inherent cause, in its self-activity and prerog- 
atives of free-will. It has free personality, and the self- 
felt, and self-acknowledged power of causation and 
choice. It is a " causa causans." All intelligence is 
such, and it is all the proper cause of which we know. 
If other modes of being are possible, they are not known 
or knowable, and are without relevancy or significance 
in this discussion, and could no way affect our position. 

Intelligence, then, is the characteristic of the eternal 
cause. It is so "a fortiori." This is infinite, absolute 
mind, having in itself the elements of all power and 



THE BEING OF GOD. 29 

cause. Mind has everywhere homogeneous character- 
istics and manifestations. It must have intellect, sensi- 
bility and will. These are integral to it, and include 
all that belong to it, or that is conceivable as in it. We 
may go from derived mind to the un derived, and ob- 
tain from conscious manifestations, the elements of both. 
From what is in, and belongs to derived, dependent 
mind, we recognize what belongs to independent, abso- 
lute mind. The one is a derivative from the other, and 
like it, and in correspondence with it. The forthgoings 
of the absolute will be in the direction of its own being, 
in giving birth to mind, and constituting it the offspring 
of its author. There will be mutual similarity and ap- 
preciation. They will correspond with each other, and 
we pass from the known to the unknown, as we step 
by the moon into the visible heavens. We legitimately 
take the chronological or the logical method, and pass 
from effect to cause, and from cause to effect, and we 
see in the eternal cause, not the reflection merely of our 
own intelligence, and mental constitution and energy, 
but the absolute and unfailing source and fullness of it. 
We come to the fountain head of all being, intelligence, 
and power We arrive at the original, unlimited, inde- 
pendent cause ; at the infinite mind, which was before 
all else, and by which all else exists. And we get this 
with the infallible certainty of demonstrative truth. 
We get the doctrine in consciousness, and by the light 
of our own intelligence, and we refer it legitimately, in 
its relations, to the original, absolute cause. There is 
firm footing. Intelligent cause finds its fullness and 
perfection in the original, eternal cause, and we behold 



30 THE BEING OF GOT). 

in it the grand primal element and authorship of all else. 
There is "the hiding" of power, and there the counter- 
part and depository of the intellectual characteristics, 
energies and manifestations of a created universe. 

6. The always-being is righteous cause. Here we rise 
into the moral bearings of our subject more appropri- 
ately, and enter a sphere of truth that is thought to be 
less ascertained and obvious. We may then proceed 
with special caution, and be more deliberate in the con- 
clusions to which we come, and we throw into the fore- 
ground of our position the following summary of thought 
comprised in it, as we ask, Is not rectitude the normal 
mode and state of the intelligence % Is not sin an apos- 
tasy from right? Could malevolence and wrong have 
an object in an independent, absolute, intelligent cause? 
What is the doctrine of conscience and of reason ? 
What is the instruction of fact in the case 1 We may 
review these inquiries a little in detail, and see with 
what united force they bear on the position, that the 
intelligent, eternal cause exists in eternal rectitude and 
truth. 

[1] Rectitude is the normal status of intelligence every- 
where. Mind is constituted in its elements and inher- 
ently adapted to right action under the influence of 
truth. Its nativity and growth, and harmony of being, 
are in all righteousness, goodness and love. It feels 
outraged and wronged when committed to any other 
course. -Its indigenous principles have their natural 
development, and play, and outgrowth, and consent of 
action in all goodness, and justice, and truth. Wrong 
grates harsh thunder in the chambers of the soul, and 



THE BEING OF GOD. 31 

throws it into a state of uneasiness, self-accusation and 
discord. Wrong is essentially abnormal to the intelli- 
gence. It puts it* out of gear in itself, and with all 
things else. It is an interference and a disruption. 
There is not an intelligent being that truly fellowships 
wrong, and that does not feel humiliated by it, or that 
is not ashamed of it, and that seeks not apology and 
excuse for it. Its presence begets self-reproach and a 
sense of guilt and unworthiness. Its indulgence brings 
on antagonism and warfare. It is unreason, as well as 
unrighteousness. It is without occasion, and without 
excuse. It is out of harmony with truth and the nature 
of things, and an apple of discord everywhere. It is so 
in the individual, in society, and through the universe. 
It is intellectual and moral disruption, suicide and ruin, 
and it would not be the status of original, absolute 
cause, or of anything made in its image. 

[2] Sin can only be by apostasy from right. There is a 
logical difficulty in the way of conceiving wrong to be 
the normal state of the intelligence. Sin is transgres- 
sion. It supposes law, and right, and righteous author- 
ity, and the behests of goodness and truth. Moral gov- 
ernment is before it. It finds a nature of things estab- 
lished, — an order of being, to which it is disruption and 
discord. It is logically abnormal, and by priority of 
right. It is apostasy from the original, absolute cause, 
and cannot be of it, or possess its moral nature. It is 
dereliction and antagonism, and could not be in unity 
and agreement with the truth and verity of things. 

But there is no opportunity or possibility of change, 
or apostasy in absolute cause. The conception of change 



32 THE BEING OF GOD. 

would reduce it to limited, finite effect, and divest it of 
all elements of original, absolute cause. Besides, what 
should change it? and from what Should it apostatize, 
but from itself ? It has all knowledge and power al- 
ways, and has in it no ground of change. This is con- 
ceivable in intelligent beings, only by change of view, 
by new considerations, through increase of knowledge, 
and the pressure of motives not before in the mind. 
Change has its genesis and analysis in the altered state, 
or circumstances of the being changed. This is a lia- 
bility of derived, finite mind, which of necessity begins 
in ignorance, weakness and inexperience. It begins at 
the zero of knowledge, for knowledge is an experience, 
and not a creation. But, to it are confined all the attri- 
butes, incidents, and grounds of change. To the all- 
knowing absolute, they are impossible. " He is of one 
mind, and none can turn him." Changes in him would 
not be of the nature of intelligent action. The highest 
freedom would make it ever certain that he would be 
unalterably the same, "yesterday, to-day, and forever." 
Change in finite mind will occasion change of treatment 
from the absolute, but this is only because of its own 
oneness and immutability. It will have moral govern- 
ment, for it is itself intelligent cause, and will adminis- 
ter it in perfect righteousness from its own inherent 
perfections. Such a government, so administered, is a 
perfectness on the part of absolute cause. Nothing else 
could be better, or be in its stead. This only is con- 
ceivable or possible in the absolute, and perfect freedom 
of absolute, intelligent cause. This is of its image, and 
in its likeness, and will be its method and forthgoing. 



THE BEING OP GOD. 33 

[3] Malevolence would be without an object in original, 
absolute cause. It would not be intelligent action there, 
and could have no place. Malevolence implies resist- 
ance, controversy, and ill-will. It is a normal state no- 
where, and would have nothing to feed on in the abso- 
lute cause. Simple goodness is not in itself an object 
of hate to any intelligence. Righteous authority must 
come in our way, and set up its claims on us, when we 
have got off* the track of obedience, or have resolved to 
serve ourselves, and have our own way, to be resisted 
and impugned by us. Sin is shy and apologetic. No 
one accepts it for its own sake. It has the verdict of no 
intelligent being in the universe. All are ashamed of 
it, and tender excuse for it, and seek to justify them- 
selves in some way for its indulgence. " The wicked 
flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are bold 
as a lion." 

But what occasion has absolute cause for all this, and 
to turn to the deceits and craft of ungodliness % Wrong 
would have no object or apology there, and must be 
forever without ground or possibility. It is independ- 
ent. It intuition ally knows all things, and is from eter- 
nity to eternity the same. It must recognize truth, and 
right, and blessing, as the only reason, and the opposite 
as only unreason and folly. Sin is always so, and an ab- 
solute cause would see it, and thus regard it, and be at 
a perfect remove from it. It is conceivable only in the 
finite, and there only in misguided, mistaken, and per- 
verse will. 

[4] We advert to the doctrine of conscience and the na- 
ture of mind. The thought here is intimately blended 
3 



34 THE BEING OP GOD. 

with what has been already said. Mind is made for 
truth, and truth adapted to it. The conscience, with 
fair opportunity, corresponds to all righteousness, and 
eschews all wrong. It has a scorpion's sting for him 
who practices iniquity. It repudiates all wrong, and 
makes the way of the transgressor hard. Thus writes 
our great English dramatist : 

"Thrice is lie armed who hath his quarrel just." 
— " Tis conscience that makes cowards of us all." 
— " The thief doth esteem each bush an officer." 

So again, on the other hand, 

"I feel within me 

A peace above all earthly dignities, 

A still and quiet conscience." 

Sin seeks twilight and evasion. It is inconsistent 
and out of harmony with all mind, and is every way 
abnormal to the innate principles of the intelligence. 
The greatest of modern scholars (ISTeander) has called it 
simply "unreason," and with this agrees all fact in the 
case. We know nothing of wrong but through apos- 
tasy. We have only to cease from it, in penitence and 
reformation, to recover our normal state, and put the 
powers of the soul into consent and harmony. All his- 
tory agrees in this. The conflicts of the ages demon- 
strate this, and the sentiments, aspirations, and progress 
of the race. What is the advancing civilization of the 
world but a recovery, a resurrection, a plea, in behalf of 
associated humanity, as well as individual man, for that 
" righteousness which exalteth a nation, and against the 
sin which is a reproach unto any people V 9 



THE BEING OF GOD. 35 

But we do need more to evince the innate, moral rec- 
titude of the absolute cause. It is the doctrine of all 
science and truth, of all logic and reason, and inevitable 
from the nature and history of mind. 

7. The always-being is infinite cause. What shall limit 
it, and put it into the finite, and give it metes and 
bounds'? Nothing is before it, or superior to it, or cor- 
relative with it. It must be unlimited and boundless, 
as are space and duration. To put it into the finite re- 
duces it to a mere effect, subject to the accidents of time. 
The thing would only be absurd, and involv^the denial 
of absolute cause altogether. 

It may be difficult, and perhaps impossible, for us 
fully to grasp the contents embraced in infinite cause. 
The nature of thought and speech would seem to forbid 
it. We are derived beings and exist in the finite. Lan- 
guage is earthly and finite in its composition and his- 
tory. It is essentially analogical. Our conceptions rise 
from the known to the unknown. We compare the in- 
finite with the finite, and strive after the apprehension 
of it through that medium. They are not correlates. 
The infinite is a conception of the pure reason. It is ap- 
prehended through a negation of the qualities of the 
finite, as effect, and as existing by necessity, from the 
fact that the finite exists. It is the logical antecedent 
of it, and must be, if the infinite is, and must be appre- 
hended to be by the intelligence, as the alone condition 
of the finite ; — " being clearly seen by the things that 
are made, even its eternal power and godhead." 

The infinite is, so to speak, the normal type of being. 
The finite is limited, partial and fragmentary it may bo, 



36 THE BEING OP GOD. 

changing and evanescent, and exists by no necessary 
law. It has the characteristic or accident of more or 
less. It is the product of free-will, and might not have 
been at all. It is the exception and not the rale of be- 
ing. Infinite existence was without it. It is in quality 
and amount only what it was made to be, by the crea- 
tive fiat of eternal cause : — a few billions of worlds, per- 
haps, with people and products, their habitudes and mu- 
tations, their accidents and results. The grand law of 
being is in the ever-existing, unchanging, infinite. 

It is diflkult for us to conceive of either mode of be- 
ing, and of the one no less than of the other. The finite 
is effect, and could exist only by reason of the infinite, 
and as its product. The doctrine of cause generates, 
necessitates the existence of the underived infinite. The 
finite is by reason of the infinite, and can only thus be, 
to give it being and the qualities of finite existence. 
Finite it will be of course, it being created, and pro- 
claims its logical antecedent and creator, in that which 
is not created or finite. It springs out of that as the 
offspring and manifestation of it, and its constant work. 

Of the infinitude of original cause, it is enough for 
our position that we conceive of it, as we do of space 
and duration, as every way limitless and without bounds, 
or dependence or change, as in no way effect, but exist- 
ing eternally as the same ubiquitous cause. 

8. The always-being, is self -existing , perfect being. It 
depends on nothing else. It exists in self-sufficiency 
and perfection ; independent and without imperfection 
in any respect. Imperfection is characteristic of the 
finite and dependent. Decay and change are its liabili- 



THE BEING OF GOD. 37 

ties. It is subject to outside influences. It has been 
put into being and may be put out. It is not raised 
above a state of dependence : it could not be. Not so 
the great first cause. These elements would reduce 
it to an effect, and put it in the finite. It must have 
been perfect in all respects, indestructible and exhaust- 
less, or it would have come to nought, or never have 
been. It can have no element of decadence, exhaustion 
or change. Every attribute of it, must of necessity be 
perfect in its kind, and eternally the same, without var- 
iableness or shadow of turning ; and these attributes 
are those of wisdom, goodness, and power, — all perfec- 
tion, both natural and moral, infinitely and forever. 
Nothing other or different from this does the finite and 
created demand. If but a mote exist, all this is and 
must be true and always was. With perfect certainty 
and assurance we spring from the existence of a thought 
or an atom, to the existence of the uncreated, infinite, 
and eternal cause, with all the perfections of intellect 
and heart belonging to intelligent being. 

9. The always-being is God, the personal Jehovah, with 
all the attributes and prerogatives of the Godhead. This is 
St. Paul's conclusion, and we arrive at it with the secur- 
ity and perfectness of pure truth. It has the infallible- 
ness of a first truth of reason ; clearly seen in the light 
of the intelligence itself. 

Personality resides in the will. This is the executive 
faculty of intelligent being. It is cause and the only 
cause. Reason may be receptive only, and impersonal 
it may be in some of its aspects ; the sensibility may 
be passive ; but not so the will. That is the centraliza- 



38 THE BEING OF GOD. 

tion of the personality, and 'the living and conscious 
agency of the mind. It is the life and energy of the 
acting, responsible agent. Here is where we abandon 
the abstract form of speech, and take the concrete. 
Here we give impersonation to our subject, and speak 
of cause as the investiture of the deity and the synonym 
of God, with all divine perfections infinitely, of both 
intellect and will. This is the "I am" of Moses, and 
the Pentateuch, where it is referred to with philosophi- 
cal exactness and comprehension. Accidental meta- 
physics cannot coin a more descriptive appellation. It 
is the always existing — the eternal present, embracing 
in a complete personality all the attributes and preroga- 
tives of the one living and true God. It is revealed in 
the intelligence. Reason would cease her office not to 
observe it. Nothing is, or all this is. If any thing is, 
then God is, with all perfection of wisdom, power and 
goodness. 

We need no special revelation to evince this, except 
as sin has obscured our vision. Indeed, Moses must 
have accepted it as the dictate of reason, and known in 
the intelligence, and appealed to, as an indubitable first 
truth, for the verification of the message sent therewith. 
It must be the dictate of reason, or it would be no test 
or verification of the message, or of him by whom it is 
sent. It must be an undoubted first truth, or it could 
not thus be appealed to, or discharge its office in the 
connection. The process was wholly philosophical, 
passing from the known to the unknown. Thus the 
existence of God is nowhere made the subject of a com- 
municated and verbal revelation : this it could not be. 



TIIE BEING OF GOD. 39 

The conception of the being of God antedates, by ne- 
cessity of relation, that of a revelation from him. One 
must have a friend, in order to hear from him, and rec- 
ognize his being in accepting his communication. Thus 
a divine revelation will begin with stating the acts of 
God, and not with a disquisition to prove that he is. 
It will recognize everywhere his being, and make it the 
basis of its communications and declarations to the 
ignorant and misguided, as what they ought to know, 
and would, only as " through lust, they did not like to 
retain God in their knowledge, and changed the true 
God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature 
more than the Creator, who is blessed forevermore." 

Ignorance of God is an apostasy from the true and 
primeval knowledge of him. It is born of the lusts 
and vile affections of men, and is less allied to the head 
than the heart. God has not left himself without a wit- 
ness in the intellect and conscience of man, and it is to 
that, that revelation appeals with its economy of instruc- 
tion and grace. It is a restoration and recovery. It is 
needed only by reason of the fall, and has its design to 
gain us back into the harmony of our being, and into 
harmony with God. 

Thus in review of our whole epitome of thought, the 
legitimacy of faith in the being of God is every way 
vindicated and obvious. It is the offspring of the in- 
tuitions of reason, and of inexorable logic. I believe 
in the existence of God as I do in that of any thing else 
that I know to be. My faith, confidence or trust in 
God, is the result of an intellectual apprehension of 
him, as of any other being, and not a baseless and un- 



40 THE BEING OP GOD. 

sustained sighing, or wish for that which we cannot 
"know." Faith is the result of evidence. It is the 
child of light in the understanding. The w Godhead " 
is clearly seen, through any manifestation in the finite. 
"God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." We 
have such proof of his being and perfections, as we 
have of no one else. Our bodily organs do not appre- 
hend the real being of any one: the recognition is 
wholly mental. And we have more relations to God 
than to any one else, and over and above all, the relation 
of dependence, by which we see that his existence is the 
necessary prerequisite of any person or thing else. 

We hold then, and by the most rigid logic, and the 
most assured and unquestionable methods of the intelli- 
gence, that faith in God is of all things most reasonable, 
and is commended to us by every possible avenue of 
knowledge. Spirit, of course, is not matter, and yet if 
we accept the revelation given, it is quite capable of 
taking on the forms of matter, as is true of ourselves. 
Bodily organs do not apprehend spiritual being, but the 
mind for which they act, does, and sees it with the cer- 
tainty and perfectness of direct consciousness and con- 
ception. The commerce of mind with mind is, of 
course, intellectual, but nevertheless is real and appreci- 
able. God recognizes us, and we recognize him. He 
holds intercourse with us in the communion, and fellow- 
ship, and love, and all the reciprocities of the infinite 
with the finite, and we give back the like responses and 
their counterpart. Finite mind is an emanation from 
the infinite, and in its image, and like it in its proper- 
ties. God can communicate with it intelligently, and it 



THE BEING OF GOD. 41 

can understand him and reciprocate the intercourse. 
This is the behoof and privilege of all finite mind. For 
this was it made, and in this is its highest prerogative, 
excellence and glory. 

And here lies the sphere of intelligent being ; — God 
with us and we with him and with each other, in the 
three categories of all possible knowledge and relation- 
ship; — the infinite — the finite, and the relation between 
them. 

On this basis faith becomes truly the dictate of rea- 
son and the form of it. It is intelligently the gift 
of God and the handmaid of virtue. It receives meekly 
and with docility all divine communications, as not from 
an unknown source, but as from a known God and Fa- 
ther, who " has not left himself without witness," or 
left us in our orphanage without light, seeing that " he 
is not far from every one of us, for in him we live, and 
move, and have our being." 

Nor in this do we unduly magnify the gift of reason, 
or the province of our intellectual being. What else 
would be true, or to be expected ? If God be an in- 
finitely perfect being, shall not that appear in his work, 
and especially in that crowning work of spiritual being 
in the finite % Shall it not be a respondent of the in- 
finite reason and be capable of knowing as well as 
of loving and serving God ? Must its devotion be to 
one unknown, and its worship be that of ignorance and 
mere dictation ? How then could we be intelligent and 
responsible worshipers, or distinguish between truth and 
error in this department of knowledge? This power to 
know God is indispensable to both intelligence and mo- 



42 THE BEING OF GOD. 

rality. If we cannot know God, then by equal force of 
reasoning we cannot know other spiritual beings, and 
all sense of obligation and duty will fade from the mind. 

Sir William Hamilton and his followers mistake the 
relations of faith, and inaugurate a nomenclature on this 
subject which only confuses and bewilders. It is not 
true that because we believe the senses, therefore they 
are not methods of knowledge. It is because they are 
methods of knowledge and loopholes of the mind, by 
which it looks out upon truth and sees what is, that we 
believe them. What are they but the mind thus sur- 
veying the domain of truth, and gaining the materials 
of knowledge % and when, with these hints from con- 
sciousness, or the senses, we pass into the region of 
pure truth, what is more conceivable than the necessary 
being, perfections and relations ot God, and the love 
and service we owe him ? The faith that is not founded 
in knowledge, and that does not take the intellect into 
its conclusion, must indeed be supposititious, and arbi- 
trary, and by consequence shadowy, and unsatisfying, 
and well would it have been if distinguished writers on 
this subject had analyzed it with greater patience and 
accuracy. 

But enough of the brief recital of truth designated in 
this article ; and we close as we began, with a reference 
to the philosophical, as well as inspired, St. Paul, who, 
in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans, as else- 
where, seems to have measured in few words the hight, 
and depth, and length, and breadth of this whole sub- 
ject, and left, " without excuse," all wavering and doubt 
concerning it. 



PART II. 



MORAL GOVERNMENT. 



MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

INTRODUCTION. 

Moral Science is among the ultimate studies of th.6 
human mind. Though related to the sphere of duty, its 
scientific investigation and arrangement have been re- 
tarded by the objects of sense and the earthly employ- 
ments and thoughts of men. Aversion of heart to the 
claims of religion may have contributed to this, bnt the 
subject has encountered hindrances in the engrossing 
attractions of less intellectual pursuits, as also in the 
want of that general culture of mind which is need- 
ful to its full development and comprehension. Much 
has been gained for it of late, from the scholars of 
Europe and of this country, and it is destined undoubt- 
edly to assert its prerogative as Queen of sciences in 
the researches of the future. Advancement here is 
most needed in the sphere of theology. The creeds of 
the church have indicated its immaturity and suffered 
by reason of this. Advancement in truth and thought 
among men demands it in this study also. The prob- 
lems in theology cannot be resolved without it. Many 
are getting discouraged in respect to them. Vitally 
important questions are ignored and blindness evinced 
on many subjects which lie at the base of all competent 
and satisfactory conceptions of what belongs to a sys- 
tem of divine truth. The being of God — the doctrine 



48 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

of accountability — of divine decrees- -of the origin of 
evil and God's relation to it, are but examples of this, 
and indeed the whole Calvinistic and Arminian contro- 
versy, may be cited as the arena of this. Some assured 
first principles in moral science, well-understood, well- 
defined, would bring this contention to an end. More 
maturity here is also essential to progress than in any 
other department of thought, and as a humble contribu- 
tion in this direction, the following treatise is respect- 
fully presented to the candid examination of the scLuiar 
and the Christian. 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 49 



CHAPTER I. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 

[a] There are two spheres of existence within our knowl- 
edge. These are the physical and the intellectual — matter 
and mind — nature and spirit — that which is merely ef- 
fect and irresponsible thing, and that which is inher- 
ently cause, has self-activity and the attribute of con- 
scious, responsible personality. The difference between 
them is that between person and thing — between a self- 
knowing and self-moved being, and inert and uncon- 
scious matter, moving only as it is moved, and possess- 
ing in itself no element of self-activity or knowledge or 
change. A more complete and graphic apprehension of 
these subjects may be gained by looking at them in the 
concrete, and thence catching the more exact features 
of each, and recognizing the difference between them. 
Observe that buoyant, laughing, exultant boy, whirling 
his top or flying his kite — that mariner at the helm 
turning the ship "whithersoever he listeth;" or the 
machinist constructing or directing the most intricate 
combinations in the mechanic arts. The top, — the 
kite, — the ship, — the machine, are moved from without, 
and on the simple principle of the mutual repellency of 
forces. The authors of the movement in question, are 
1 



50 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

self-moved, from a principle of inherent and elective 
cause in themselves. 

[b~] The physical sphere directly and except as related 
to the spiritual, is ruled out of our present inquiry. The 
two are blended together, but the first is for the sake of 
the second and would be destitute of significance and of 
object without it. It may be essential to the needed 
experience of mind in the finite, but is the casket con- 
taining the jewel, rather than the jewel itself. 

[c~\ Of Spirit there are two spheres — the infinite and the 
finite — God and created intelligences — his offspring cre- 
ated by Him and in His image, and being the finite ex- 
pression of Himself. If either is, both are. The finite 
could not be without the infinite, the created without 
the uncreated ; — the dependent without the independent 
and absolute. We may know that that is, which we 
can not comprehend. Thus we may know that God 
is, though not able to comprehend the subject matter of 
absolute existence. There is difficulty in comprehend- 
ing any existence — finite or infinite— derived or unde- 
rived — and in reality no more in the one, than in the 
other. 

[d~] But — The finite is. This is matter of conscious- 
ness, — of testimony by the senses — -a proof by all the 
methods of intuition and knowledge. If the finite be 
not, then is there no relevancy or object in our science. 

[e] The finite suggests the infinite. The created declares 
the uncreated — the creature the creator — the derived 
and limited, the underived, independent, and absolute. 
How could there be the created, without one to create"? 
how the derived without one whence it comes?— -how 



PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 51 

the dependent without one who is not dependent in 
his being or attributes? Thus the existence of the ab- 
solute Jehovah is an infallible intuition of the reason 
from any and all derived and created existence. It is 
as positively seen in a mote, as in a universe. 

[/] The infinite is cause. It is so because there are 
effects. The universe is an effect and shows " His eter- 
nal power and Godhead." The finite could not be if 
God were not a cause. It is the nature of mind to 
be a cause, — finite mind is cause in its sphere. " He 
who made all things is God." How get the finite with- 
out the infinite, to form, bound and limit it? Thus 
while the finite suggests to us the infinite and absolute, 
it can be only by reason of it, [the latter.] 

[g] Only intelligence is cause; matter is mere effect. 
It is where it is put, and only as it is put; it is " causa 
causata" — exists only as the resultant of force applied, 
and is dependent on it. Only mind is " causa causans " 
— has inhering force, self-consciousness, self-activity. 

[h~] God is intelligent cause. He has made intelligent 
beings. The intelligent creation shows Him to be an 
intelligent cause. The material creation shows it. The 
adaptation of means to ends, the subject of final causes 
indicates it. The universe is full of his wisdom and 
goodness. That which is made could not in this exceed 
the maker, or be more than evidence of His wisdom, 
goodness, and power. 

p] God is a perfect being and a perfect intelligent cause. 
Perfection is the normal state of all intelligence — it 
could [not] but be that the infinite, absolute one is per- 
fect in intellect and character, and that all perfection 



52 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

dwells in Him in an infinite degree. The being of God 
logically antedates the possibility of wrong. Wrong is 
an apostasy from right and pre-supposes it, and pre- 
supposes just and rightful authority. Thus God. is [ex- 
its] before sin and wrong are possible. Again — sin can 
be only through the aberrations of finite cause — it oc- 
curs through the mistaken and wrong use of constitu- 
tional powers in themselves right. God can have, and 
can see, no reason to be otherwise than a good being. 
Divine intelligence could have no argument for wrong, 
so that a perfect righteousness must be the method of 
the Deity. Malevolence would be a solecism as an orig- 
inal form of intelligence, and philosophy agrees with 
fact, that sin could only be by apostasy. 

\_j ] The infinite and the finite of moral being are related 
to each other, and out of their relations spring rights and 
duties — imperatives and responses — the doctrine of right 
and wrong, of good and evil — the awards subjectively 
and objectively attendant on conduct and character. 
Homage and worship are the legitimate claim of God, 
and the inherent duty of intelligent creatures, and thus 
spring all the claims of the decalogue and the reciprocal 
rights and duties of moral law. This is the sphere of 
the greatest truth and behest of being. 

\Jc] The dignity and value of the subject — it presents the 
three categories of truth — the infinite — the finite — and 
the relation between them. 



WHAT IT IS. 53 



CHAPTER II. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT WHAT IT IS. 

[a] As there are two spheres of being, so are there 
two kinds of government , physical and moral. 

\b~\ The nature, the adaptations, and limits oj the first — 
that which is exerted over simple material existence. 

1st. It is in the way of force applied — simple, di- 
rective force — the exercise of power under the move- 
ment of mind. It has no reference to rights or claims 
in the subject of it. Matter is merely a means under 
control of mind, and is for the sake of something else 
other than itself. 

2nd. Government in physics is adapted to that which 
is mere effect or thing, and is limited to that. 

\_c] Moral Government correlates with intelligence. It is 
adapted to the nature and relations of mind — it ex- 
presses the reciprocal relations of intelligent beings, 
both in the infinite and finite — both as to God and 
creatures. 

[d~] Why called moral? 1st. Its relations to law, — 
2nd, to duty, — 3rd, to character and desert, — 4th, to 
destiny. It is a government in [the domain of] free- 
dom — has free-will for its subject. It takes up the 
question of rights, obligations, personality and the reci- 
procities between absolute and derived intelligence. 



54 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

[<?] Its characteristics. 1st. It is a morality — -its ele- 
ment, its aim is a righteousness — its home is in the 
sphere of morals — it comprehends that sphere. It con- 
nects personality with obligation and is administered in 
the interest of all righteousness. 2nd. It demands a 
moral perfection — it results in the highest good — the 
highest happiness results from its moral perfection and 
righteousness, [that which it demands.] 

[ /'] Moral Government in its probationary stages and 
methods is an economy of moral influences adapted to intelli- 
gence and apprehensible and appreciable by it. These in- 
fluences are two-fold — -subjective and objective. 1st. In- 
telligence in contact with the " not me " suggests much 
that is of the nature of implied truth, — the first truths 
of reason — cause, space, time, God — ideas inherent in 
[or growing out of] the constitution of the mind — con- 
science—all moral relations and convictions. 2nd. Ob- 
jective truth — truth of all kinds, varieties, combinations, 
and strength— all law and religion imposed, both nat- 
ural and revealed — all appeals to the susceptibilities, 
sensibilities, and conscience — the field of intellect and 
feeling, of logic and eloquence, fact and fancy, judg- 
ment and imagination, interests and the passions. 

[^] Moral government in its probationary stages and 
methods is resistible— -it is so from the nature of mind. 
This is the region of free-will. The logic of the doc- 
trine of accountability proves this. Moral Government 
is inconceivable without this — a misnomer; so is con- 
science and common sense. This is no limitation of 
Divine power. That correlates with physical effects. 
The resistible is not always resisted; the is, is not al- 



WHAT IT IS. 55 

ways synonymous with the could, nor can it be. There 
is yielding often where there could be resistance. Men 
repent often, when they can hold out in impenitence ; 
they freely submit, though the contrary is possible. 
This is essential to the doctrine of finite cause and the 
elements of a moral system. It is a matter of con- 
sciousness. 

[A] In respect to the incipient and probationary 
stages of Moral Government, the supremacy of God as 
administrative agent is resultant and eventual in a sphere of 
free-will, and not complete without taking on the type of 
physical power, in eventual retribution. Finite cause has 
its province of freedom. Free-will often resists the 
Holy Ghost effectually. "Ye do always resist the Holy 
Ghost." Moral government is left to an issue in retri- 
bution which has in it physical power. 

\f\ The will of God may not always transpire, and 
that may be which God in no sense wills. Moral Gov- 
ernment implies this in its exact idea ; fact shows it ; all 
graces have their possible opposites— all character its 
alternative. What would be a virtue which is inevit- 
able % a grace that could not be helped, [could not but 
be exercised?] The first prohibition of wrong is in- 
structive here — God wills our sanctification. He wills 
all to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the 
truth. 

[j ] Moral Government may be abused — from the nature 
of mind — of law — of authority. Instructive facts — sin 
in heaven — on earth — now. 

[&] A divine moral system is a perfection — it is of the 
nature of God — it is a divine expression — it only could 



56 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

be, ox can be, as an emanation from God in moral 
sphere. Anything else would be an imperfection, and 
[would be] unworthy, as coming from Him. Hence 
the present is not a choice of systems, but the only and 
perfect one, and as a divine moral government is a per- 
fection in righteousness. 

[I] Moral Government has truth — mind — 'probation — 
retribution, rewards and punishments as correlates and 
concomitants thereof. 



WHERE IT IS. 57 



CHAPTER III. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — WHERE IT IS. 

\d] The being of God. This is essential to all author- 
ity and the source of moral government. 

[h] God, a Person, with the rights and prerogatives 
of personality in the infinite and absolute. Thus he is 
rightfully the source of authority, law and jurisdiction. 

[c] God, a Power, and competent to moral government, 
and its requisites and concomitants. All mind is cause, 
inherently possessing the elements of power. God, the 
infinite, absolute mind, has all moral and physical power. 

[d] Created intelligence, a derivative of divine intel- 
ligence — made in the image of God, in correlation and 
correspondence with Him, — [fitted] to understand, ap- 
preciate, and obey him. 

[e] The existence of God and of created intelligent beings 
being given, a moral government of course is. It can [not] 
but be; it is inherent in the relations of the Infinite 
and finite to each other. In God vest the rights and 
prerogatives of the Godhead, — in created intelligences, 
the duties and behests of his offspring. It is not an 
artificial or conventional economy, but inherent in the 
relations of the Absolute and of those made in his 
image. Moral government is the meet and inevitable 
expression of it. 



58 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

[/] The Divine mora! system, not a choice of systems, 
but a Divine perfection. It only, could be ; it is inher- 
ently resultant of the being of God, and of creatures 
made in his image. It is simply of Him and like him. 
It could be substituted or supplemented by nothing 
else. It is in the perfect freedom and self-sufficiency of 
God a Divine necessity, acting from the dictates and 
impulses of his own perfect nature and being. God 
thus acts, and does as he does, in infinite freedom. It 
is thus a solecism to call the present, as a moral system, 
a choice of systems, as it only is conceivable or possible 
in the premises. 

\g\ The same subjectively argued, and necessary. The 
human conscience is not satisfied except on the prin- 
ciple of a perfect rectitude. We are so made that the 
intelligence repudiates wrong. There is logic too in 
the position — right, to be right must be exactly right ; 
thus any deviation from perfect rectitude introduces 
imperfection, and constitutes a wrong. The economy 
must be a perfection, and compass it in its aim. 

[h~\ A failure in results at any point could not lead to 
an abandonment of the system — its nature is elective, 
and it is inherently liable to abuse. Free-will may fail 
of its intended results but it cannot be changed — its 
prosecution is inevitable. Any one or more worlds 
may apostatize, but its principles must be maintained; 
it is of the nature of God and of all mind. 

[z] Moral government has mutual adaptation. It is 
adapted to all perfections and claims of the Infinite, — to 
all growth and expansion in finite mind. It gives op- 
portunity for the display of all intelligence, it rises into 



WHERE IT IS. 59 

the supernatural, and gives manifestations to all that 
belongs to mind and heart. Without it the universe is 
mere effect, material and without object, and might as 
well not have been. 

\_j ] Moral government an inherent excellency — its rela- 
tion truth-ward — man-ward — God-ward. A moral sys- 
tem concentrates in itself the glories of the universe. 

\k\ Its ultimate triumph and glory — the sufficiency of 
God, pledged for this — demanded by the laws of the 
intelligence. God, truth, and conscience, conspire for 
it. The first truths of reason must in the end predomi- 
nate. Lord Brougham said, " the Gospel must prevail 
for it is true, and must eventually be universal among 
men." Truth is the aliment of mind, and has in it a 
principle of success. We have the familiar adage, 
"Truth is mighty and must prevail." The Gospel has 
in it the elements of all moral truth. All science con- 
firms it. Its ultimate prevalence is no less a dictate of 
reason, than the instruction of prophecy. 



60 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT HOW ADMINISTERED. 

[«] Moral Government is in the sphere of the supernat- 
ural. It is above nature and physical laws — [the laws] 
of simple cause and effect — of the " brutum fulmen " of 
mere matter. It is a commerce of mind with mind, — of 
the Infinite intelligence with the finite intelligence — ol 
God with those made in his image. 

\b\ It is in the commerce of mind and truth. It is where 
truth is submitted to mind and as it is. It is the corre- 
lation of the " me " and the " not me " — the subjective 
and the objective, — man with the relations of his being. 
Its elements are in the intellectual and the spiritual, as 
related reciprocally to all else. 

[c] It is a sphere of duties and rights — it administers 
law, — imposes obligation, implies duties. It is where 
the Infinite and finite of moral being meet in their re- 
ciprocal relations and correspondence, — God with his 
rights, prerogatives, and infinite heart of righteousness 
and love, and man with his recognition of God, with 
love and obedience. It extends over the whole sphere 
of responsibility, of right and wrong, of moral good and 
and evil, and their retributive results. 



HOW ADMINISTERED. 61 

[d] It is a doctrine of deserts, of praise and blame — of 
rewards and penalties. It administers them righteously 
— it has its incipient stages, and its resultant issues. 

[e\ It is the sphere of free-will, of voluntary action — of 
compliance with right or resistance to it, and thus it has 
the peculiarities and adaptations of that sphere. It can- 
not be compulsory — but is mandatory, though persua- 
sive and resistible, except as eventual and retributive. 

\_f~\ & provides legitimately for character and destiny 
and comprehends them. This is of its nature as an appeal 
to the voluntariness of being, in view of its responsi- 
bility and power of right action. It is the intelligence 
confronted with law and rectitude, and the consequences 
of obedience or disobedience. 

[g\ Thus it has probation and retribution — the first as 
its incipient stage, the last as its resultant [or conse- 
quence.] They are its formative and final state — to- 
gether they are its complement, [they make it com- 
plete.] 

\K\ Its method then is — 1st, by the administration of 
law. What is law? It is variously expressed and 
manifested according to the subject of reference. In 
morals it is right reason in the way of innate intelli- 
gence, or [of] expressed statute from rightful authority 
[declared] by conscience, or the Divine word. Again, 
it is manifested by motive influences in the formative 
state of character, — truth addressed — the Holy Ghost — 
the susceptibilities of the intelligence — and moreover, 
by rewards and punishments. 

p] An economy of grace may intervene and combine 
in the movement. 



62 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

[,;'] The exigencies of the case may make this last 
a wisdom and a glory. 

[k] The demands of morality must not thereby be 
supervened, but will be sustained and subserved. 

[/] The administration of moral government will be 
a morality, its demand and aim will be right action, to 
secure its legitimate results in a holy and happy uni- 
verse. 

[m] It will also be a finality. Jft can be secured by 
nothing else. To form character and gain a destiny 
and have it administered, is a complete whole. It is 
the necessary complement [or completion] of moral 
being. Nothing can be after, or be more ultimate 
[ulterior.] It is of the being of God and his perfec- 
tions, and eternally like him in its principle and ele- 
ments. 



THE RELATIONS OF THE INFINITE TO IT. 63 



CHAPTER V. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT- THE RELATIONS OF THE INFINITE 
TO IT. 

[a] The authorship of the created. The derived, cre- 
ated, dependent, must have had an author. The actual 
universe finds it in God. Philosophy and Revelation 
agree in this, — and that it was in the beginning, for 
what could count time before events ? The first fact or 
movement, as a Creator, and for the created, will of ne- 
cessity be in the beginning, for how apply time to the 
endless duration of the Infinite 1 Time is a method in 
the finite only, and in reference to the finite, and there 
only in its formative and probationary state, and be- 
cause this is terminable and limited. 

Reason sees no other method of creation than that 
revealed. No means outside of God could be used, for 
there were none, and it must have been by a Divine 
word and force from within, and in counteraction ; and 
Dr. Hickok may yet be found to be philosophical and 
valid in his definition of matter. 

[b] Sustentation of it. Derived existence is dependent 
in its nature and being, and for the continuance of it. 
Providence is as sovereign and divine a dispensation as 
creation. The physical creation is mere effect — " causa 



64 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

causata " — it is as, and where it is put. But intelligence 
is in the image and after the likeness of its author. 
It is dependent in its being, but it is made a cause in 
itself, — a " causa causans." Its activity is of its nature 
— it is self-activity — its created nature is that of cause. 
It is created intellectually, emotionally and spiritually 
like God, — to be a cause in its sphere, as really and 
properly as he is in his, — originating its methods, and 
plans, and purposes, and choice, or voluntary states, and 
with a self-control of its voluntariness and in its volun- 
tary sphere, that makes responsibility legitimate and 
appreciable. 

Matter and mind are sustained by God in accordance 
with the nature of each, with mere effect as the attribute 
of the one, and of real cause as that of the other, — mak- 
ing the first merely irresponsible effect, and giving a 
truly responsible destiny to the last, — constituting the 
first merely a means, and putting Himself into society, 
communion, and fellowship with the last. 

[c] The Divine right to it — the creation. 1st, as author 
of it. 2nd, as possessing all divine perfections in his 
relation to it. His is the right of creation, and preser- 
vation, with all the claims of infinite goodness, justice 
and truth, as correlated with our dependence and wants. 

God's right of ownership is absolute in the direction 
of his own perfections, — his possessory right is perfect. 
The universe is originated by Him, is sustained by him, 
and thus is his by every claim, rendered authentic and 
desirable by every divine perfection. 

[d] He has complete authority in respect to it. Adapta- 
tions of divine rule. 1st, Physical sphere : 2nd, Moral 



THE RELATIONS OP THE INFINITE TO IT. 65 

sphere. 1, Simple directive force, and absolute and 
universal and unlimited control. 2. Limited — 1st, by 
his perfection, and 2nd, by the prerogatives of all intel- 
ligence. Duties and rights are correlates. One may 
not be commanded to [do] that which is wrong, or 
which is out of his power. God would not, and could 
not rightfully, falsify the moral relations of the universe. 
His authority is complete in all righteousness and truth, 
— may command whatever is right and according to the 
relations of being. 

[e\ Supremacy over it. This is righteous, as he made 
it, and he is good. (See above.) 

Supremacy — how maintained over it. 1st, — in its 
economy and construction — in the laws and adaptations 
of the physical universe, which are absolute. 2nd, — in 
the essential rectitude of divine supremacy as seen by 
all. 3d, — in the administration and force of righteous 
and rightful law, in providences and probation. 4th, — 
by the office and work of the Holy Spirit. This last is 
a superadded gracious economy — not inherent in moral 
government — not necessary to moral responsibility — but 
its bestowment enhances obligation, as it is a help, and 
in aid of all morality — of all right voluntary action, — 
is not given to increase the powers of the soul, or con- 
fer new powers, but to induce right voluntary action 
within the range of its legitimate faculties. This is a 
mighty agency in behalf of the truth, and for God and 
his righteous rule and law. It is a progressively cumu- 
lative influence and power. It will greatly increase in 
the future, by the increase of light and the elements of 
5 



66 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

conviction, both subjectively and objectively. 5th,— 
supremacy maintained by and in retribution. 

[/ ] Judgment — general — particular. 

[y] Sovereign, final allotment in righteousness, to the 
righteous and to the wicked. 



RELATIONS OF THE FINITE TO IT. 67 



CHAPTER VI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT— RELATIONS OF THE FINITE TO IT. 

[a] Moral relations have significance, in respect to 
intelligent beings only. Mere physical existence is re- 
spected only as related to them, and in their hands 
and use. 

[6] Derived intelligences owe allegiance to Divine 
moral government. God's relations to them involve 
and claim it. This is inherent in the relation between 
God and creatures in his image. His being God and 
their God, claims it, and makes it their highest duty, 
end, and dignity. This is the dictate of our conscious 
being, and of all reason and logic in the premises. 

[c] Derived intelligence owes rectitude in heart and 
life. [It owes allegiance] 1st, — to absolute right as right. 
A principle has significance, as applied to moral agents, 
— [it is] a mere abstraction, except as belonging to a 
living and responsible agent, and is as nothing. We 
owe to ourselves inherent rectitude — our conscious be- 
ing claims it, and we feel wronged without it, and de- 
meaned in our own sight. No intelligent being is 
without this innate sense and feeling. 

2nd, — to God as God — to him as the infinitely perfect 
one, and our God. This is the meet response and ex- 
pression in creatures, to his relations to us as God. 



68 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

[cT\ Specific forms of duty involved in this allegiance and 
rectitude. 

First Table of the law — adoration— worship — supreme 
love — implicit, perfect obedience— entire confidence — 
willing, hearty submission, co-operation — in spirit — 
work — aim and end. 

Second Table of the law — duties and rights under it, — 
equal, impartial love, — reciprocal obligations and claims, 
and all the duties and behests of morality. (See Exod. 
20.) Mutual respect — regard, justice, benevolence, com- 
passion. 

The family relations — husbands and wives — parents 
and children— brothers and sisters — neighbors, friends, 
— all men. 

Society, — the individual to it, and it to the individual 
—allegiance and protection — the magistrate as ordained 
of God, — end of magistracy, the highest public good, — 
civil authority, divinely warranted, and obedience to it 
a religious duty. 

The Church, — man's relation to God's economy of re- 
covery and salvation — duty of repentance — faith and 
acceptance of the terms of the Gospel — church member- 
ship — co-operation for the spread of the Gospel and the 
salvation of men. 

[e\ Unity of both tables of the law — direct objects vari- 
ant, but one in spirit and end, — duty to God covers all 
relations, — faithfulness to all relations harmonious with 
faithfulness to each. Love to God inspires love to man, 
and vice versa. 

Relations to God, how modified by the apostasy. No Di- 
vine right abrogated, — no doctrine of law and justice 



REIATIONS OF THE FINITE TO IT. 69 

[rendered] obsolete, — acceptance and salvation now im- 
possible on grounds of law and personal righteousness. 
If relief be given, it must be by mediation and grace, — 
by acknowledgment of sin, and personal ill-desert — and 
sanctification by the cross and the methods of grace. 

The song of the ransomed is — "to Him who hath 
washed us from our sins, and redeemed us to God by 
his blood," and to Him be the glory. 

To the apostatized salvation is by recovery through 
grace and by atonement for sin. It is to the undeserv- 
ing. It implies personal recovery and fitness of spirit, 
but not legal righteousness — it is a ransom, — a salva- 
tion — a rescue, a deliverance, — a redemption, and eter- 
nal life and glory by the interposition, sacrifice and 
merits of another. Hence the songs of heaven. 



70 THE RULE OP MORAL GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

Investigation is the law of access to revelation as to 
other truth. The Bible presents its subjects of thought 
mostly in the concrete form. They stand there in liv- 
ing relations with men and things. They are imbedded 
id history, in biography, in providence, as well as in the 
direct utterance of doctrine and precept. They admit 
of scientific arrangement and exposition. All human 
study, however, is attended with imperfections. The 
testimony of the senses may be reliable, and the first 
truths of reason unequivocal and valid : yet in the con- 
necting links of our mental processes, we may err. The 
judgment may be defective in its range and apprecia- 
tion of facts; the imagination may play the truant. 
Extraneous influences bear upon us with or without our 
consent. A shipwreck or a death-scene is described by 
no two witnesses precisely alike. Hence the imperfec- 
tion of theology and of religious creeds. They bear the 
impress of the age that formed them. They receive 
modification from the general habits of thinking in their 
author. They reflect the hue of the philosophy of their 
time. They are influenced by the concurrent science, 
literature, general intelligence, and prevalent culture of 
mind at the time. They are, as creeds, human produc- 



THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 71 

tions, and fallible, like every work of man. They will 
be the legitimate off-shoot of the religious thought and 
maturity of their time. History evinces this, as well as 
reason, and hence we err not in saying that religious 
creeds are in the legitimate field of criticism, and subject 
to modification and improvement, with the progress of 
truth and the growth of mind. There is analogy in 
truth. The sciences illustrate each other. They will 
continue to do so. Their advanced study will aid the 
comprehensive appreciation of all truth. A religious 
creed aims to give the philosophy of Divine truth. It 
goes behind the facts and statements of Revelation, and 
would utter the law and economy of them, and it is in 
this transfer of the thoughts of God into the abstract 
formulas of these human symbols, that the liability of 
mistake mainly is found. The Bible is a mine of truth, 
but not fully explored. The facts are on record, but 
the philosophy of them not adequately appreciated or 
rightly understood ; it may be. Philosophy itself is not 
yet a perfected science. M. Cousin styles it the ultimate 
developement of the human mind. Moral science in its 
methodized statement has scarcely arrived at maturity. 
Its principles, as a system of truth, are not fully estab- 
lished, or the ultimate rule in morals by common consent 
accepted. Though the highest, this is unquestionably 
the latest study of man, and its goal is yet future. 

Moral science is inclusive of theology, for it takes in 
the whole subject of duty and all moral relations. It is 
of the nature of a universal science in that higher sphere 
of being where intelligence is correlated with the subject 
of right and wrong. In this sphere religion is embraced 



72 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

and will in its theoretic statement have only the ma- 
turity which characterizes the general study of which it 
is a part. It may be expected to advance with the 
progress of all science and truth. It is yet a study. It 
has problems yet to solve, and a completeness yet to 
secure, which is now unattained. In this progress, the 
direction of inquiry most prominent and successful will 
be in the three following topics — the ultimate moral rule — 
the characteristics of a moral system — and the [ultimate] end 
in a moral administration. These are intimate in their 
relation to each other. They are like subjects, predicate, 
and copula — like the major and minor terms and the 
connection between them. They are the central points 
of moral science and of moral relations. They comprise 
the rule with its subject and object — the principle with 
application and reason ; as seen in a scheme of things 
— the ultimate ground in which lies the conduct of the 
Divine Being, and the required conduct of all beings 
made in his image. The thought then is comprehensive. 
It grasps the main features of the whole subject and 
relations of moral law, and in its needed and maturer 
study cannot fail to relieve the embarrassments under 
which theology yet labors, and to reduce to greater 
harmony the theoretic statements and the moral con- 
sciousness of the church. As a small contribution to an 
object so desirable, we offer the following suggestions 
on (1) The ultimate moral rule. 

This is perhaps the most fundamental subject of hv 
quiry belonging to moral science. Without a measuring 
line nothing can be measured — no height ascertained, 
no soundings taken, no length or breadth or thickness 



THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 73 

determined. And the line must be in hand in order to 
the function required of it ; we must have the rule in 
order to use it. Hence all systems of moral science 
begin at this point. They start with the inquiry respect- 
ing the ultimate rule. With more or less accuracy and 
success they labor at its doctrine and ' would show its 
application. This is observable in respect to both the 
objective and the subjective theories. These theories have 
been various, and not unfrequently quite conflicting, if 
not destructive of each other. They have borne the 
impress of the age, and of the spirit of inquiry which 
gave them birth. They have often shown a great want 
of the philosophical element. They have fallen back on 
no reliable first principles of truth, or when they have 
approaclfed one, they have not recognized and grasped 
it, and made it the basis of the structure they would 
erect. The rule they would furnish has been more of 
the nature of an aggregate than of a simple — of a con- 
glomerate or residuary deposit than of a pure and ele- 
mental first truth — more a resultant, than an initiatory 
process of mind. Hence the inadequacy or unattain- 
ableness or unsatisfactory nature of the rule, as given 
by many writers, and its unsettled state hitherto. There 
is progress in relation to it, reliable and satisfactory, but 
not completeness. With this progress is seen the 
prevalence of the subjective theories, and the elevation 
of the moral elements of our constituent being. This 
is movement in the right direction. It honors the in- 
telligence which God has given us, and acknowledges a 
criterion in our own essential being, which, as a princi- 
ple, sin has not demolished, and which sits in judgment 



74 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

on the utmost waywardness of the passions. It reasserts 
the work of God in us, and as abiding there, notwith- 
standing the havoc and ruin of men's transgression. 

But further inquiries and elucidation seem needful. 
Mistake on the rule is fundamental. Equivocation, and 
embarrassment, will then attend every application of it, 
and breed mistake through every process of induction 
and thought, consequent upon it. To this day, Old 
School Theology of the Princeton type admits that u God 
is above morality" — that "no rule reaches himself"— 
that " his relations to wrong are unappreciable," and 
that " a blind, sightless faith at this point is our only 
safety from scepticism."* In this the mind and con- 
science of New England, and of theologians of the 
Puritan stamp generally, will not acquiesce. And here 
divergent and discrepant theories obtain respecting the 
whole subject of moral relations, but particularly as ap- 
plied to theology. The difficulty is primarily in the 
doctrine of the rule. The discrepancy starts from this 
point — the confusion is in this idea. And the trouble 
and disquietude thence arising must increase so long as 
the moral element in our being aspires to ascendency, 
while a sufficient and satisfactory basis of thought in the 
ultimate rule is not fully and adequately reached. We 
shall be at sea amidst storms and currents, over which 
we have no control, and in the midst of which our 
methods of calculating course and distance, are most 
inadequate and deceptive. 

In stating then the characteristics of the ultimate moral 

*See Review of Beecher, Conflict of Ages. 



THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. /5 

rule, and approximating a definition of it, we remark, 
1st, It cannot be an acquisition properly. It is of the na- 
ture of an inherent principle, rather than a result in 
experience — a manifestation of the reason, rather than 
an inference from fact. We must have it, to find it, 
tautological or enigmatical as this may seem to be. We 
must start with the rule, in order to seek and recognize 
it. We could not know it if we already had it not. 
How know that any specific thing is right, without a 
rule to judge it by % How know that God ought to be 
worshipped or that his declaration on the subject is 
binding, or that the greatest good is itself obligatory, 
without already having a rule in morals ? You can as- 
certain nothing without a rule. Why present to me all 
the various theories of the ultimate rule which have 
ever obtained, and seek to convince me that this or that 
one is right? To what in me do you appeal, and what 
do you concede that I already have, if it be not a rule 
of right with which to compare, and according to which 
to judge your theory % All experience lies in the appli- 
cation of the rule. To apply it and find out what meets 
its demands, is all that is possible in experience, from 
the nature of the case. And this only follows the gen- 
eric law of all knowledge and truth. A thing entirely 
new can never be known or appreciated. It must for- 
ever remain an unresolved and insolvable quantity. 
What is the thing done, when one is lost in the forest, 
or on the prairies, or on the deep ? What is the exact 
element of his condition, which constitutes his being 
lost, but the severance of the known and the unknown ? 
the being where he can recognize nothing that he knew 



iO THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

knew before, or compare the present with the past — in 
one word, he is without a rule. And he must forever 
remain ignorant of his course and position, till some 
previously known object break upon his pathway. It 
is in the doctrine of analogy that we find the law of all 
acquisition. But for the intuitions of reason, we should 
be forever without knowledge, and the method of in- 
crease in knowledge is by assimilation. It is by devel- 
opment—by bridging over from the known to the un- 
known — by applying the principles of knowledge that 
are in us and of us. But a moral rule is a thing " sui 
generis." Nothing else is like it. It is not knowledge 
simply, it is not fact or experience. And if it is not in 
us as a principle it must forever be beyond us and our 
apprehensions. If not of us, it must be unattainable. 
If we must gain it through the facts of knowledge and 
experience, our efforts for it must forever be unavailing, 
and it must continue to be an unknown and insoluble 
quantity. 

But the thought here is closely allied to our whole 
inquiry and should be a little further extended. We 
have five senses. Can we be cognizant of any thing in 
objective truth which they do not reveal ? Can we get 
or give the apprehension or knowledge of sweetness, 
without the application of the sense of taste? Can we 
be reasoned into the knowledge of sweetness ? Is not 
the sense referred to, the only possible test and testimo- 
nial and gauge and rule and method of the idea of 
sweetness, and indubitably so, notwithstanding the 
liability that some tongues may be palsied, and some 
tastes defective or perverted 1 Why does the deaf man 



THE EULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 77 

lose the gift of speech, and fail in producing the har- 
mony of sweet sounds, and subside in his utterances, 
eventually, into that hoarse, guttural, unearthly apology 
for a voice which we uniformly notice in him 1 He is 
without the use of the rule, or the means of applying it. 
Give him the requisite sense, and he will recover himself. 
Why not instruct the brute beast in the fine arts ? The 
world-wide answer is, "He is without discourse of 
reason." He is not capacitated for it. He has no 
aesthetic rule. There is in him no scale of advancement, 
or estimate of the lines of beauty and grace. The same 
is true of the brute in respect to the subject of morals. 
He was not designed for that sphere, and he is without 
a moral rule. How is it that man has in him the doc- 
trine or idea of a moral righteousness, which the brute 
has not 1 The outward facts and experiences may be 
supposed to be alike to both. Each in wrath may gore 
his fellow, and one shall feel compunction and remorse 
for the deed, and the other not. What is our power of 
moral distinctions ? Why do we decide morally on the 
facts of our experience and observation, and why do we 
classify them as we do on the side of vice and virtue ? 
and what is the inevitable principle of that classification I 
The question is not as to the mistakes we make, or the 
helps we have in the application of the rule, but why is 
it that we hold virtue to be obligatory and vice a crime % 
Why is it that we cannot but regard goodness as lovely, 
and God as worthy of adoration and worship ? Why 
do I feel obligated to love God and goodness, and how 
have I the scale that makes this. so? The question is 
after the principle of our moral distinctions, and the 



78 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

rule of decision inherent there, and not its application 
in the necessary defectiveness of an outward experi- 
ence. And the answer can only be as in the Bible : 
"And God said let us make man in our image, after 
oar likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish 
of the sea," <fcc, &c. So Cs God created man in his own 
image; in the image of God created he him" — and 
hence,— 

2nd. The rule is substantive in its nature. It is in us 
and of us. It is an element in our being as creatures 
made in the image of God. In this respect it has 
the property of an instinct, put in our being by the 
Author of it as a moral percipient for use and obedience 
in our voluntary history and in our relations to all else. 
It has the same substantive character in it that reason 
has in its relation to the will. It is the foreground of 
the responsible personality, and is indispensable to it. 
It is an intuitive element, and its operation is an intui- 
tion. It is an inherence, and not an accretion. It is 
like the eye, or the ear, or any sense, only that it is in 
the moral of our being distinctively from the physical- 
is correlated with the will, and is, perhaps, more liable 
to abuse from the passions than the properly physical, 
outward senses. Its office-work is with all fact, and 
knowledge, and experiences, and relations. You bring 
them to it, and you pass a moral judgment on them 
according to its dictates, and conform your life thereto 
on the responsibility of a moral agent. In its normal 
state it is a God-send for all the purposes of our moral 
i-eing, as the eye is on the field of optics — and there is 
no 'jther law of responsible action than that of obedience 



THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 79 

to its dictates. To act intelligently one must act con- 
scientiously. We are never placed where we must not 
obey the sense of right in us. As we have no other 
rule, so we can use no other. We must inevitably bring 
all our informations to it, and by the inherent law of 
right judge and act in view of them. 

A moral sense is a unique attribute of being, 
like reason, or the will, or the outward physical senses. 
As such it is a work of God, and a perfect work. It is 
perfect in its kind. It is a moral function in our con- 
stituent being, made after the moral image of God. It 
is a fac simile in the finite, and resembles perfectly its 
prototype in the Infinite, so far as nature and quality 
are concerned. Reason in man is like reason in God, 
It is communicated for mutual correspondence between 
the Infinite and the finite. It is of us, that we may 
know God, and know ourselves. It is inherently a per- 
fection of its kind, and is homogeneous in God, angel, 
and man. And it is an ultimate appeal. We bring all 
information and means of knowledge to its arbitrament, 
and submit implicitly to its dictates. In the field of the 
intellect its fiat is supreme and final. Just this is true 
and legitimate in the moral element of our being. It is 
after the moral consciousness of Him who made it, and 
is the image and counterpart of that moral conscious- 
ness, as transferred to the finite. And the differences 
which are sometimes attributed to it, are from the same 
direction, and from the same causes, as they are in re- 
spect to our physical senses. But the eye is formed on 
the most approved principles of optics, though it may 
need the telescope to read the heavens. Yet even then 



80 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

it brings the informations of the instrument to its own 
economy of vision, and from its own inward law judges 
of the facts revealed. So in morals we comprehend the 
rule in our own being, as inherently a perfect rule, and. 
bring to its estimate and decision, the facts and relations 
of the moral sphere. 

Such a rule, so located, and so ministered unto, both 
by reason and revelation, is a necessity in our spiritual 
being. It is simple— it is unique — it is universal. Every 
man has a conscience, and its elements are the same in 
every man. The principle of its decisions is ever the 
same, and its overt manifestations become defective and 
insufficient only through processes foreign to it, as an 
element of mind, and as seen in a fair opportunity for 
its legitimate work. It is in this respect like reason, or 
the will or any inherent function of our being. It may 
be misinformed, and may act from defective or insuffi- 
cient premises in any given instance or application, but 
it cannot be displaced, or supplanted by any other rule. 
All that is due or possible in the matter, is to supply it 
with truth in the understanding and reason that the 
application of the rule may not be a mistake. Hence 
the province of instruction. We hold ourselves and all 
men bound to feel right and to act right, in the pres- 
ence of truth. The conditions being supplied, and the 
means furnished for legitimate action, we concede the 
perfection of the rule, and of the obligation. Our appeal 
is as direct and uncompromising to the moral being of 
mtn as to his reason. Both are in the same category 
as the subject of reference. We have no other resort. 
Conscience may be misguided, or seared, or dormant 



THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 81 

through iuapplication or misuse. But the only method 
with it, is to inform and quicken it, through divine aud 
human agency, and by the varied appliances of the truth 
to secure the legitimate action of the rule, divinely im- 
planted in our spiritual being, and which being there 
by the hand of God, and in his image, is a perfect work 
and rule. The chief difficulty, too, in the practical 
ministrations of the rule, is from the superpositions of 
ignorance, and error, and sinful passions. "A deceived 
heart hath turned him aside." Wrong moral judgments 
are from a stifled conscience — from a misguided imag- 
ination — from a hardened heart, and habituated perver- 
sity of will. Childhood is proverbially conscientious. 
The judgment of woman is held to be pre-eminently 
quick and reliable on moral subjects. The aim of the 
gospel is to restore the rightful supremacy of conscience 
among men. 

There are some expressions in the Bible which rather, 
in the way of undesigned coincidence, throw light upon 
our present inquiry, and thus give a divine sanction to 
the rule here indicated. To those who brought to Christ 
the woman taken in adultery, that they might entrap 
him in his words, He said, " Let him that is without 
sin cast the first stone." And they which heard it, being 
convicted by their own consciences, " went out one by 
one." The appeal is to their convictions ; the arbiter is 
their conscience. Paul said before the Jewish council, 
as he looked earnestly upon them: "Men and brethren, 
I have lived in all good conscience before God unto 
this day." And also before Felix : " Herein do I exer- 
cise myself to have always a conscience void of offence, 
6 



82 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

toward God and toward man." The same apostle, in 
presenting the principles of the Divine government to 
the Church at Rome, asserts that there is no respect of 
persons with God in dealing with men, with or without 
a positive revelation and precept. "For as many as 
have sinned without law shall also perish without law, 
and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged 
by the law. For when the Gentiles which have not the 
law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these 
having not the law are a law to themselves, which show 
the work of the law written in their hearts, their con- 
science also bearing witness, and thoughts the mean- 
while accusing or else excusing one another." A very 
comprehensive passage also occurs II. Cor., iv, 1, 2, 
showing the ultimate appeal of the gospel, and the doc- 
trine of the Apostle in respect to a moral rule : " There- 
fore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received 
mercy we faint not ; but have renounced the hidden 
things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness nor 
handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifest- 
ation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's 
conscience in the sight of God." 

Passing then from the substantive character of the 
rule, we remark, — 

3rd. The ultimate rule is moral in its nature. As its 
dictate is a morality, so is its nature. The object of the 
rule is character, and in right character it finds its claim 
and satisfaction. It is a moral rule. It has respect to 
moral relations. It is a discriminating power in the 
interest and behoof of our moral being. Its office-work 
is to indicate conduct, and mark the applications of law, 



THE RULE OP MORAL GOVERNMENT. 83 

and settle the questions of right and wrong in our in- 
telligent and responsible being and history. It need 
not settle questions of expediency, for it is not correlated 
with our merely sentient being. It is not a measure in 
aesthetics, or the philosophy of intellect. Its sphere is 
distinct and "sui generis." It is in the higher, the 
moral nature and relations. It demands a rectitude 
there, and as a rule is regardless of consequences in the 
other and lower departments of our being. Its aim is 
an excellency of spirit, or a result in character — a con- 
formity to right, " a partaking of the Divine nature." 
Thus its post is where intelligence meets the subject of 
law, and obligation, and duty. It is a discerner in the 
spiritual of our being. It stands between the reason 
and the will, to discriminate the moral relations of the 
product of the one and the voluntary movements of the 
other : to say what all truth demands of us, and whether 
we observe its behests : to mark our delinquencies, and 
claims of us that we be perfect, even as our Father who 
is in Heaven is perfect. 

If then the statements already made accord with the 
fact in respect to a moral rule or sense, it is easy to see 
the wisdom and beneficence of God in its bestowment. 
All morality implies the power of discrimination between 
right and wrong. Without a rule moral government is 
impossible. A standard of right is indispensable in a 
moral system, and it must be appreciable by the subjects 
of moral government, and within the reach of all under 
its sway. We should not be left to go in search of it, 
if that would bring it, or say who shall ascend into 
heaven for it, or who shall descend into the deep ; but 



84 THE RULE OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

it should be nigh, in our mouth and in our heart, like 
the word of faith in the gospel which is its counterpart 
and correlative. 

That which is not a perfect standard of right, is no 
standard of it. Any deviation from right is wrong. A 
right line can be only what it is, and no use of It can 
be made without the knowledge of it. Thus a perfect 
standard of right is indispensable to any moral judgment, 
and without the knowledge of it, no moral judgment is 
possible. For the same reason that a standard is need- 
ful at all, it is needful at every point in the whole sphere 
of its operations, and to all morality. Then every moral 
being must have it, and use it, and it must be commen- 
surate with the bearings and requisitions of law. But 
this is comprehensive of all those made in the image of 
God, and they must be possessed of this standard, as we 
think they are. And if so, it must be a gift in their 
moral being, inherent like any other attribute, divinely 
constituted in us. As then all men must have a stand- 
ard of right in order to any morality, so all men do have 
it, and find its imperatives in their moral nature, through 
whatever impediments of ignorance, thoughtlessness and 
vice its rightful sway may be obstructed, their con- 
sciences in the mean while " accusing or else excusing 
them" for their conduct. 



tiM & 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 85 



CHAPTER VIII 

APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

Moral government lies in the sphere of responsibility. 
It has respect to beings nnder law, or to those charged 
with the administration of law. It is rightfully correl- 
ated with those beings who have reason, and conscience, 
and free will. To beings not rising to the dignity of 
these attributes, it makes no appeal and has no signifi- 
cance. It is the application of a moral rule within the 
appropriate sphere of that rule. Of moral government, 
then, the following things may be stated : 

1st. It respects intelligent beings. It is designed for, 
and appropriate to them. We can obey its behests, and 
must defer to its claims. It is a meet respondent to our 
mental and moral constitution. It recognizes that con- 
stitution, and rightfully builds its claim and economy 
upon it. 

2d. It has respect to the question of responsibility in those 
to whom it relates. Its sphere is the application of a moral 
rule. Its aim is character and conduct — its awards are 
those attaching to character and conduct. Its sphere is 
in the matter of right and wrong — of praise and blame, 
and in the rightful consequences and destiny of character 
in its subjects — and hence, — 

3rd. Its function is at the point of voluntary action and 



86 APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

its issues. It goes to the will ; it asserts its prerogative 
in the voluntary and executive faculty of our being. It 
asks a personal boon. It seeks that which we can give 
or refuse, and metes out to us a personal destiny, ac- 
cordingly as obedience has been yielded or withheld. 
The question is the conformity of will to the rule of 
right — the supremacy of conscience— the sway of reason 
and truth, and all righteousness in the voluntary obedi- 
ence of the soul. And hence, — 

4th. Moral government claims a perfect righteousness. 
Any deviation from right is wrong. A rule must be 
exact. All knowledge — -all science — all truth — and all 
morality are so. A right line is without angles or curves. 
So a moral government must be administered on the 
principle of a perfect standard of right. All coming 
short of that would be an imperfection and infirmity. 
Moral government must have right character in its sub- 
ject, or inflict a righteous penalty. It must support its 
standard. It is the correlate of a right rule, and must 
not deviate from it. It must claim all righteousness, 
and condemn all sin and wrong. 

5th. Moral government is in itself and its principles a 
righteousness. It not only demands perfection of those 
under it, but it is administered on the principle of an 
inherent perfection and righteousness. It is in its ad- 
ministration and methods an expression and an example 
of that which it claims. In this respect it is homoge- 
neous in its origin and claims. God is in this behalf wiiat 
he requires and is in himself — the illustration and the 
argument of his demand of others, " Be ye perfect even 
as your Father in heaven is perfect." This is indispens- 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 87 

able to the legitimacy of the whole movement. It is of 
its nature, and vital to all its functions. It is the base 
to the superstructure. If God is not right, and if his 
government is not the exhibition of a perfect rule, then 
obligation is forfeited, and a mural system, in its objec- 
tive relations, impossible. It would break down, because 
fealty to unrighteousness is a misnomer, and an absurd- 
ity. Besides, on a principle of mind already stated, if 
God has not the rule, he could not know it, or adminis- 
ter upon it. It must be in him to have an objective 
reality and expression beyond him. He could give birth 
in a moral sphere only to that which is morally like 
himself, and a legitimate concomitant of it. The rule, 
with him, could be no acquisition. It must be of his 
being or he could never get it. His works will express 
his perfections and be their legitimate counterpart. And 
if they embody a moral system, and demand the recog- 
nition of a moral rule, it is because he has it himself, 
as the inherent law of his own being, and perfections, 
and work. He could not go beyond himself for a law, 
or recognize a righteousness which he had not himself. 
He could not administer on a principle not in, and of 
him. The application of a rule is all that experience 
admits of, and a rule must be, in order to be used. The 
work of God is a development, and if righteous it is 
characteristic of his righteous being ; and the issue can 
only be, as above declared, that he is what he requires, 
and contains in his own being. There is a homogeneity 
of intelligence in the created and the uncreated. Intel- 
ligence is indispensable to right moral action. In the 
finite it should obey, love, and worship. In the Infinite 



88 APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

it should govern righteously. Moral government is an 
expression of the relation between finite mind and God. 
It is not so much an institution under and in view of 
that relation, as a necessary concomitant of it: "Where 
God is, and creatures in his image, there it of course 
is," and is in and of the relation between them and God. 
A moral system is not a choice of systems. It is the 
only one possible in the premises. It is the only 
one conceivable as legitimately of, or belonging to, them. 
Nothing else would express the relations inherently 
there. It is a co-ordinate of these relations and of the 
being of God and our own. No other economy could 
be in its place or be a substitute for it. It is, in the Deity, 
an intuition and not a calculation of expedients: — a 
morality rather than a means — an inevitable first truth 
rather than a problematic or doubtful conclusion. Crea- 
tures made in the image of God are a perfect work, and 
moral government is a perfect exponent of the relations 
between them and God, and both it and they, in their 
constitution, are the perfect work and way of God. To 
suppose that other methods could have been substituted 
for a moral government, is to suppose that God could 
be otherwise than he is, or that to be formed in his 
image is a matter without distinctiveness or signification, 
and hence, — 

6th. A divine moral government in its method and admin- 
istration, will not only be a righteousness but an appreciabJ 
"righteousness. A defect is a failure. A wrong method 
compromits the character and sufficiency of God. Should 
his government fail it its morality, or discover any dis- 
regard of virtue in its author, we could not respect it or 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 89 

Him. Should it exhibit any complicity with wrong as 
a divine expedient, — should it be tempted to employ sin 
as a means, or give any sanction to the doctrine that the 
end justifies the means, this would be inexplicable, and 
we should and must distrust it. God has given us the 
same rule that he observes himself. It is in his being, 
and in our own, and it implies the first principles of 
morals, as reason does the first truths of intelligence, 
and they cannot be shown to be false. Let it but be 
understood that God may treat alike the innocent and 
the guilty, that truth is not the habitation of his throne, 
that virtue is not the very being of his soul, the intelli- 
gent creation would at once feel its orphanage, and the 
universe give signs of wo that all is lost. Morality, in 
its principle, belongs to the intelligence, and will yield 
to no arbitrary, external economy. It may be choked 
by extraneous means, but give it opportunity, and it will 
utter its indubitable testimony for the right. This is 
the lesson of all history. It is the great struggle of hu- 
manity now, and will be, under God, till the supremacy 
of conscience is secured, and the "is" coalesces in the 
"ought." Here lies the great difficulty with God's 
earthly unfinished providence and the necessity we feel 
of linking it with a future retributive state of being. 
Probation by itself is an incompleted moral economy, 
and the mind irresistibly carries over its unsolved prob- 
lems to an after reckoning and destiny, and derives a 
valid argument for the rectitude of God from the rev- 
elation which he gives of another and after life, conse- 
quential upon this. Humanity never surrenders a first 
truth of reason and conscience. Through lack of reflec- 



90 APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

tion and culture, we may fail to recognize and apply the 
necessary ideas of the intelligence ; bat when developed 
and incorporated with the thoughts and experience and 
language of men, they are never lost. In this more than 
in anything else lies the philosophy of history, and its 
office- work as the teacher of the present and the future. 
We grasp the principles of truth developed in the past. 
We get its ideas. We learn the application and use of 
the intellectual and moral rule, in respect to the materials 
of knowledge already acquired, and pass on with it to 
the future. Mysteries there are yet, and will be, but 
they lie riot in the first principles of morals. They must 
not belie reason or shelter an immorality. We must, 
from the inevitable and uncompromising intuitions of 
reason and the moral sense, see, or be made to believe 
and take for granted, that " it is impossible for God to 
lie," or to be deficient in any morality, before we will 
go any further or feel any obligations of obedience. 
Every precept must defer to a principle of truth and 
right which we have. Hence a divine moral government 
will not contravene first principles. It will accord with 
the intuitions of the reason and the moral sense. It will 
keep within the sphere of all morality, according to the 
inspired inquiry, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth 
do right?" 

7th. Moral government has probation and retribution. 
It involves character and destiny. But character must 
have rule, and be tested by it. Character is learned by 
the application of the rule to an experience in our vol- 
untary moral being. This experience involves a sight 
of law, and of obligation to it, and a reason for it, and 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 91 

a voluntary and executive movement of soul in view of 
it. It involves the question of right as submitted to the 
voluntary discretion of a moral being, and is thus a 
probation. It may be legal, or gracious, — an original 
probation under law merely, or one of recovery under its 
condemnation, through grace. It must be one of these 
and is limited to them, in as much as a method of re- 
covery for the fallen, through substitution and grace, is 
in this aspect and relation of it, the boundary of a moral 
system. All that can be done for conduct and character 
can be done under these, and nothing else or further 
would be relevant or in place. So also is retribution 
inherently in moral government. Law is not law with- 
out its penalty or reward. Government is no govern- 
ment without its sanctions. In the penalty or the reward 
lies the estimate or expression of the value of the law 
To be without sanctions is to be without reasons in the 
mind of the law-giver, and they are as much a natura* 
result as a positive infliction or effect. 

Probation and retribution are inherent in moral gov- 
ernment. Each has its own laws, and order of process 
Probation is incipient, and retribution resultant. The 
first has its counterpart and anticipated completion in 
the last, and the last could not be without the legitimate 
operation of the first, and both together constitute the 
integrity of the moral system. Some things however 
are appropriate to one that are not to the other. Proba- 
tion is the sphere of moral and resistable means and 
influences ; retribution takes on the element of physical 
power. When character is sufficiently tested, its subject 
may, and from the principles of a moral economy should 3 



92 APPLICATION OP THE MORAL RULE. 

and will, pass to a confirmed state of being, in the di- 
rection of it. The confirmed angels and the saints in 
glory have a character and experience that render a 
probation no longer appropriate, and naturally change 
it into its results. On them probation has answered its 
purpose, and they pass to a confirmed issue and reward. 
The election of grace is sure, in that the Lord knoweth 
them that are his ; but the promise to the Christian on 
earth is, not that he shall never fall here, but that he 
shall not fail of life hereafter. 

8th. Under moral government, that may occur which is 
every way discordant with its designs and ends, and which is 
really no part of its economy. The docrtine of an alterna- 
tive is necessarily in the idea of such a government. It 
may witness what it does not desire. There may come 
an issue against which all its provisions are framed. The 
nature of right shows the possibility of wrong. Virtue 
is discretionary. Character is elective. If there is no 
alternative pobsible there is no question pending, no 
character tested, and no responsible issue made. The 
process in that case is not distinguishable from that of 
the power-loom or the rail-car. 

The excellency of a right action in the feature of its 
responsibility is inseparable from the idea that it is, 
when something else could be in its place. An elective 
jurisdiction over the issue, that it shall or shall not be, is 
indispensable to any accredited virtue in it. You do 
not find a real personality without this, or get the doc- 
trine of personal cause. 

Moral government acknowledges the possibility of 
that which would not have to take place. This is found 



APPLICATION OP THE MORAL RULE. 93 

in the rule it gives us, in the law it propounds to us, — 
its precepts and exhortations, its penalties and rewards. 
Means are distinguishable from cause, which lies ever 
in the personality itself. Pride is possible in an angel 
of light, where utmost humility, adoration and love 
should be ; temptation, too, in man, though " made up- 
right," and he may apostatize from God. 

Character cannot be compulsory. Physical power 
and appliances will not secure it. These are out of 
place in such an issue. Moral government appeals to 
the principle of cause in us and assumes and admits it. 
It has no relevancy unless compliance with its dictates 
is a discretion and may, on our responsibility, be yielded 
or denied. This is the familiar doctrine of all human- 
ity in every day life. Why complain of a blow, if it 
could not be helped, or might not be avoided ? Why 
limit responsibility to the sphere of the will u ? If it be 
a necessitated faculty, like reason and conscience, there 
would be no significance in the limitation and reference, 
We never act wrong, without the conviction that it is 
needless and unnecessary. We never are in a position 
where we cannot do right, or do wrong. The design 
and object of a rule is conformity to it. For this it is 
given. This is its aim and scope, and it marks trans- 
gression and disobedience as that which is to be avoided, 
and which it does not want or desire. The infraction 
of it is not a thing designed by it. It was not given 
to be trampled on. Its whole intent is a righteousness, 
such as it legitimately requires. It marks transgression 
as an abuse and a wrong against it, and an indignity to 
it, and follows it with its maledictions and reproaches. 



94 APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

It was not made to be broken* This could not be. The 
conception of this turns the rule itself to a falsity and 
a farce. 

Moral government is the administration of the rule, 
and aims to secure its observance. It is itself a right- 
eousness, and seeks it. The infraction of the rule is 
no part of its object. This would make it immoral. 
Its end and aim are gained in the sphere of a perfect 
righteousness. For this it is administered— in this it is 
satisfied, and on this its appropriate influences are con- 
centrated. It repudiates wrong and makes no allow- 
ance for it. It regards sin as an abuse, a disparagement, 
a crime, and reads it out of the legitimate working of 
the economy, and as no part of its intention and aim. 
It treats it as an anomaly, and an intruder, and thus an 
offence, a mischief, and a condemnation, against which 
its voice is raised, and on which its curse rests. Sin is 
no more in it, and of it, or of its design and purpose, than 
rebellion is that of a State, or insubordination that of a 
family. Hence, in a divine, moral government, sin and 
wrong are no part, and express no feature of it. They 
are here without the " imprimatur " of heaven, without 
a divine leave and consent. They are not of the econ- 
omy of God, and are not to be resolved in a " theistic 
argument " as thus related. Sin is related to God and 
his methods and economy, only as rebellion is to those 
of the State. It is inherently possible, but inherently 
not of him, from the very terms of the statement, as. 
well as from the laws of all morality. 

But then, this feature of a moral government, which 
renders sin possible, is not only of its vitality, and na- 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 95 

ture, but is its excellency and glory. What would it be, 
.without conduct, character and destiny — -without the 
idea of praise and blame, and the essential predicates of 
a righteous and appreciable personality ? What would 
that virtue be which was inevitable, or that character 
which could not have been avoided, or that obedience 
which was not voluntary and elective? What is a 
moral government, or a personality even, without choice, 
or an intelligence without free will ? What correlation 
with law, or duty, or righteousness, or with any per- 
fection, or claim of God or truth? All that elevates a 
person above a thing, or makes the appeal to reason 
superior to that of brute force — all that makes God ap- 
preciable by us, or known to us, or that makes us capa- 
ble of love, worship and service centers here. All that 
constitutes the perfection, and the praise of God, and 
the spirituality and blessedness of heaven— all that con- 
stitutes the intelligent relationship of man to God or of 
God to man. We have it in experience, in the con- 
scious convictions of the soul, and in the oft recurring 
aphorisms of life. Every choice implies it, and every 
excellency is based upon it, and nothing is more obvi- 
ous than that moral government is liable to abuse, and 
may be attended with issues which are utterly aside 
from its intent and purpose. 

9th. In the operation of moral government, the supremacy 
of God is of the nature of a resultant issue. In respect 
to conduct and character, and appropriate probationary 
history, this supremacy is rather a finality than an in- 
cipiency. There may be that which is in no sense 
according to the will of God— which in no sense asks 



96 APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 

his leave to be, or has his leave to be — that which is 
simply rebellion against him, and not according to his 
mind in any respect, and which he takes all appropriate 
and wise methods to prevent. Indeed, supremacy im- 
plies comparison and conflict. " Control is of the na- 
ture of a resultant action over that of which it forms 
no part." It is counteraction, and no part of the im- 
pelling movement. In respect to character and all vol- 
untary issues, it is a governmental reserve. It sits in 
the background. It recognizes free will, and its prerog- 
atives in the personality. It is an executive attribute 
rather than a legislative or judiciary one. Its official 
part is not so much at the point of the formation of 
character, as at the summing up in regard to it. It is 
after conviction of crime that the power of the govern- 
ment is seen, or in its awards of virtue. 

The prerogative of voluntary, elective action, is a 
prerogative of the intelligence without which it would 
not be an intelligence, and the question of a divine 
supremacy in and over those voluntary issues as to what 
they shall be, is simply irrelevant and out of place. The 
freedom of the finite in its sphere is like the freedom of 
the Infinite in His. God is supreme, but not to the an- 
nihilation of finite intelligence, or the crippling of it in 
the proper prerogatives of finite mind. These are as 
defined and intelligible in the finite as in the Infinite, 
and in the one are a type of what they are in the other. 
There is in both true cause and jurisdiction over the 
voluntary states of the intelligence in respect to what 
they shall be. This is a property of the intelligence. 
Its acts are its own, and it has the power and the pro- 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 9< 

vince of determining them. This is a matter submitted 
to the arbitrament of no other being. It is of the indi- 
viduality which is responsible for it, and it is for the 
glory of God, and the perfection of moral government 
that is so. But then, with the prerogative is the re- 
sponsibility, and if moral government must yield the 
one, it will press the other, and at this point, and in the 
results of character and conduct is the action of a di- 
vine supremacy, as related to our present subject. The 
sphere of finite cause is limited. Some things are with- 
in its reach and others are not. God knows what is in 
man, and all finite intelligence. He is aware of their 
purposes and plans and devices, and himself has pur- 
poses in view of them. Purposes have a personal refer- 
ence. They are but the mental condition of one's own 
acts. They primarily relate to their author, and are the 
forecast of what he will do. Every agent has a plan of 
his own, and there are, in strictness of speech, as many 
economies of actions as there are agents to act, and each 
agency is distinct, and "sui generis," and in respect to 
its kind, and its actuality dependent on, and related 
alone to, the agent whose it is. God's purposes are in- 
dependently his own, and they relate primarily to what 
He will do. He may influence others to fulfil his will, 
but he will not influence them in a wrong direction. 
He may secure his ends by means of them, but it is not 
by purposing their purposes and identifying himself 
with their plans. All finite intelligences are open to in- 
fluences from without in the foreground of their pur- 
poses and conduct. God acts always from the "counsel 
of his own will." There may be then this sugges- 
7 



98 APPLICATION OP THE MORA.L RULE. 

tion and economy of influence in the foreground of vol- 
untary action, which may be obeyed or not, and the will 
of God in the premises complied with or resisted. The 
case from its nature admits of only the presence of 
moral means, and they are inherently not irresistible. 
They may fail. All is a morality. There is a real pro- 
bation and electivity, and demand for an ultimate retri- 
bution, to secure in another way and through the min- 
istry of physical, coercive power those ends in respect 
to which probation has failed. The incipient economy 
is one which lies within the sphere of moral and resist- 
ible means, the resultant and retributive one takes on the 
element of almightiness and coercion. Yet even there 
does it not subdue the will, but acts on the condition 
[of the agent] "for he must reign until he has put all 
his enemies under his feet." The absolute, government- 
al supremacy of God over finite will is necessarily indi- 
rect, and by action on the condition of the agent whose 
will it is. The doctrine of a retribution at all can be 
sustained on no other ground ; and in that retribution 
it is not the will that is subdued and brought into co-re- 
lation with God or his will, but the person of the agent 
who is confined to his own place. God may never see 
all finite will subject to him, or consonant in its temper 
to his own mind and heart. Though he may put " out 
of his kingdom all that offend and all that do iniquity," 
rebellion will yet exist in the world of the lost. God 
never will reign in all hearts, though supreme over all 
worlds, and sovereign over all conditions. 

Our reliance for the conversion of the world, and the 
eventual prevalence of religion among men, is not cor- 



APPLICATION OP THE MORAL RULE. 99 

related primarily with the doctrine of a physical or gov- 
ernmental divine supremacy, but with the pi'esenee and 
action of moral means. It is God in the word and with 
it, as a Spirit, " convincing of sin, of righteousness, and 
of judgment." The event anticipated is through the 
supremacy of conscience, and reason, and right, and 
truth, under God, and the prevalence of means, and in- 
fluences in their nature resistible. It is in the moral 
sphere, and within the precincts of the will, as a volun- 
tary and executive faculty. Much is resistible that will 
not be resisted — much avoidable that will not be avoid- 
ed. Men will freely choose life, under moral influences, 
where they might choose death. They will freely re- 
pent when it was possible for them to remain impeni- 
tent, and thus they will be converted and saved, when 
another and sad alternative was within their reach. 
Thus responsibility is legitimate, and the rewards of 
grace and personal holiness appreciable and appropriate. 
A most astute philosopher of our times has predicted 
for the gospel a universal prevalence on earth from the 
fact that it is true. Under a christian idea and aspect 
of the thought, there is force it, aud it is certain that 
what will not and cannot be done through an economy 
of moral means to influence the will and bring man 
voluntarily to righteousness will never be done, as this 
is the only method possible in the premises. 

10th. Moral government has discretion over the amount 
of means it will employ, or the extent it will go to recover 
men from sin. An endless probation is a solecism. Be- 
yond a certain limit probation is valueless, and would 
even throw the weight into the wrong scale. Hence 



100 APPLICATION OF THE MOPAL RULE. 

when law fails there can be only an economy of grace 
in the end of piety [for attaining piety as the and]. 
This is the boundary of a moral system in this direction, 
and what cannot be done under its appropriate working 
must be left undone. Probation is inceptive. It must 
stop at the point where sufficient light and means and 
opportunity have been given, and forbearance manifest- 
ed, or it will betray weakness, and invite contempt. It 
looks on to an alternative, and incorporates it in its ap- 
peal. So we act in all forms of authority known on 
earth. We point to a reckoning day. We go not 
beyond certain limits, in the trial of character. We 
determine the issue, and pass over the case to its retri- 
bution. This is inherently in the woof of all moral 
government. Nor must it do too much while in pro- 
cess of administration. It must not take unwarrantable 
methods. It must act within the sphere of all right- 
eousness. It must not love the sinner more than the 
law he violates. Even a heathen Emperor must yield 
his son who has transgressed, or present himself for the 
infliction of the penalty. Mercy must not be weakness, 
nor fail in its fealty to right and law. God must respect 
himself and the basis of his throne in all righteousness, 
and he should not compromit that element out of any 
regard to any other. He is not obliged to do for the 
recovery of sinners all that might be supposed from the 
simple element of almightiness. This might not be 
best, and he has a full margin of discretion on the sub- 
ject. There are laws of influence and relationship pass- 
ing over this whole subject, which connect every act in 
some way with all the rest, and the divine omniscience 



APPLICATION OF THE MORAL RULE. 101 

and wisdom regard this, and administer with reference 
to it. 

Still more palpable is this from the fact that sin is not 
the method of the Deity, and in no sense from him or 
according to his will — as it is simply rebellion against 
his authority — an outbreak in finite cause against his 
rightful sway and against every principle of right action 
in the intelligence. God may consult other interests 
than those of the sinner in what he will do in the 
matter. Grace has a discretion that is peculiar. Mercy 
is not obligatory in moral government. Grace might 
have been foreborne. And now, it is every way discre- 
tionary in its administration, within the limits of all 
righteousness. Patience is a virtue, and God will show 
all long suffering and forbearance, and yet no exception 
could justly be taken if it were withheld. Thus then 
probation has its appropriate sphere, and the mercy of 
God in the gospel its opportunity and its trophies, and 
yet he may in his own wisdom, and at his discretion, 
act his sovereign pleasure in the premises. It may not 
be claimed that he shall in every instance do all he can 
to prevent sin or to recover men from it. 

A divine discretion presides, guided and sustained 
alike by " the goodness and tlie severity of God." 



102 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

Moral government has its end, and the discussion of 
our subject would be incomplete without ascertaining 
it. The rule and its application must have a purpose 
for the sake of which they are administered. Great 
value attaches to this point. Failure to settle the true 
end in moral government breaks up all unity of thought 
on the whole subject, and sets us afloat on a sea of 
probabilities and fragmentary issues which have no real 
relation to each other, and cannot be harmonized. The 
integrity of a moral system lies in the three elements 
of rule, application and end. In respect to the ultimate 
end in a moral system writers have differed much, and from 
their different views on this point they have branched 
off into very discordant theories relative to the whole 
subject of divine government. Some have regarded 
happiness as [the ultimate] end in a moral system, and 
thus have been the exponents of the various plans of 
what is familiarly termed the utilitarian view in morals. 
Others have fixed upon the resultant glory of God as 
seen in the light of the final issue of all things, as being 
"the great end in creation;" while still others have re- 
ferred to " the greatest good" as being the highest end, 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 103 

without specifying the nature of the good, or its rela- 
tions. 

These various positions have involved a wide scope 
of inference and deduction, and the attempt has often 
been shrewd and consecutive, to reconcile, under the 
necessary postulates of these theories, the facts of the 
universe and the conceded demands of morality. They 
have grown out of the fact of sin, and the attempt to 
resolve it in a " theistic argument." A careful analysis 
of the theories advanced would show that they crystal- 
ize about this point, and expose their defects here. 
They are a conglomerate issue from the assumed facts 
and necessities of the case, rather than the intuition of 
reason as to what an end should be in a moral system. 
They are of the nature of an inferential result from what 
existing facts are thought imperatively to demand, 
rather than a dictate of pure truth on any appreciable 
scale of morals. And hence they are shifting and un- 
satisfactory. They have not the simplicity and reliable- 
ness of a first truth of the intelligence. They fall back 
on no such first truth. 

But we must look at them a little more in detail. 

1st. Is happiness [the ultimate] end in moral government 1 ? 
Happiness is the ultimate end in physical and sentient 
existence. The brute lives on this principle, but in his 
entire being is wholly below the sphere of moral rela- 
tions. Such an end has no necessary connection with 
conscience or a moral rule. It resolves all virtue into 
expediency, and destroys the distinction between a 
moral system and the systems of being below. It takes 
up an element from a lower sphere of being and consti- 



104 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

tutes it the governing purpose and object of that which 
is moral. It looks to sense as the anterior of spirit and 
the ground of right, rather than to the intuitions and 
dictates of the reason itself, which lie in the moral sphere. 
If happiness is end, any thing is right which will se- 
cure the most of it. But this can be ascertained with- 
out a moral rule, and does in fact abjure the use of it. 
It is an end in common with beings capable of enjoy- 
ment, and is to be secured through a calculation of ex- 
pedients. It lies not in the domain of morals. A 
moral government would break down in the authoriza- 
tion and pursuit of that end, and become a nullity. It 
would be lost in the one common range and idea of all 
sentient existence. If happiness is end, morality is but 
a means, and we must go out of it to find its rule. Its 
value is to be estimated by its effect on something else, 
which is not of it, and the measuring line of the spirit 
will be in the flesh, and all intellectual and spiritual 
values be rated by their effects on something which 
bears inherently no relation to them. It would be like 
comparing weight with color, or the taste of sweetness 
with the feeling of hardness in touch. The two things 
have no correlation, and are incapable of comparison. 
And this too would require us to regard God as good for 
some other reason back of that goodness, and that all 
persons are good for the sake of some purpose or end 
lying out of and beyond their goodness, and this by the 
common verdict of all would destroy that goodness and 
render it impossible. If happiness is end in moral gov- 
ernment, then have we no moral rule. The rule lies in 
something else which is not of a moral quality, as has 



THE END TN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 105 

been already intimated. Again. If happiness is end, 
then the end justifies the means. The rule lies in the 
end, and you may take any means that lead to it. If 
you may live in the end of happiness [in reference to 
happiness as an ultimate end] that may be your rule, 
and you can have no other, and should have no scruples 
of conscience in prosecuting that. You may be mis- 
taken as to what will promote happiness, but on the 
principle here stated you need have no questions of right 
and wrong while pursuing that end, and can have none. 
The whole matter inevitably settles down into the mere 
epicurean doctrine of the " summum bonum." 

But the subject will bear a direct reference to our 
conscious convictions. For what will one or might one 
justifiably barter away his character, and give himself 
license to sin and crime 1 May he never do it, simply 
because it would be a bad bargain for him, in- the end 
of happiness ? Shall we love and worship God simply 
for the reason that our happiness will be promoted by 
it, or the happiness of any or all men, or the happiness 
of the universe advanced by it 1 Shall the child love 
and honor his parent on the same economical principle, 
and in obedience to the same end, and shall we respect 
our fellow men, and not invade their rights, only be- 
cause it is better in the direction of happiness to do 
thus than the contrary ? But what rights has a neigh- 
bor on this principle, and who knows but that it might 
be best for me to appropriate to myself what belongs 
to him ? 

The result is simply this, that such an end does not 
accord with a moral rule, and has no direct correlation 



106 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

with it ; while at the same time, not being a sentiment 
in ns, could be of no universal application by us, and 
could not be made an end, in our moral being and ex- 
perience. This whole matter is graphically sketched by 
an Apostle in Phil. 4:8, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever 
things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, 
if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think 
on these things."* 

2d. Is then the glory of God the ultimate end in moral 
government ? This is the sense of President Edwards 
and the Westminster Confession, and it certainly ap- 
proximates to a satisfactory issue of the case, in that it 
brings the end within the moral sphere. And yet this 
view is defective in the form of its statement, and may 
be so rendered and understood as to be utterly inade- 
quate and unsatisfactory.- The reasoning by which it 
has usually been sustained is deficient in moral quality, 
and has but partially defended from the imputation of 
selfishness the character of the Divine Being.* To act 
merely for one's self is inherently exclusive and unlove- 
ly. As a principle, it is not relieved by a consideration 
of the greatness of the being who adopts it. It is even 

*See the subject more fully discussed in " Problem 
Solved, "—p. 75-6. 



* " To act merely, " &c. These statements, if applied to 
human beings in their relation to each other, are just, but 
have no proper application to the Creator, in relation to his 
creatures, for several reasons. (1) Before creatures were 
called into existence, God could act only for himself. (2) 
God is infinitely and unchangeably perfect in his charac- 
ter, and cannot act otherwise than in the most perfect man- 
ner. Besides, he is of more consequence inherently than 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 107 

more excusable in the ignorant, and less considerable 
of beings than in those better informed, and by intellect 
and position commanding a wider sphere. It is ob- 
jectionable very much in the ratio of the greatness of 
the being who acts upon it. We can excuse or pal- 
liate it in a child, when we could not in a person of 
mature age. It is a principle which correlates with 
happiness, and that as an end lies outside of the moral 
sphere and among the lower orders of being. The dif- 
ficulty consists integrally in it as a principle of action, 
by whomsoever exercised. It is intrinsically unsocial, 
unbenevolent, and not the way of pure intelligence any- 

the universe -which he originated, and could aim at no higher 
or more legitimate object than his own glory, to be exhibited 
by acting out or exercising his various perfections in the 
creation and government of it. ' ' All nations before Him 
are as nothing, and less than nothing, and vanity." (3) It 
is best, therefore, for the universe that he should act with a 
view to his own glory, as the highest end; for a large part 
of his glory (or manifested character) consists in promoting 
the happiness of his creatures, especially the happiness of 
mankind, in their moral character, relations, and capacities. 
(4) It a grand peculiarity of Bible teaching that God is to 
be, and of right ought to be regarded, both by Himself, and 
all other beings, as ' ' all in all. " It teaches that ' ' He made all 
things for Himself "; that "of Him, and to Him, and through 
Him are all things "; that " all things were created by Him, 
and for Him'"', "I will bring my sons from far, and my 
daughters from the ends of the earth; every one that is called 
by my name, for I have created Mm for my glory /' " Ye are 
not your own, therefore glorify God in your body and in 
your spirit, which are his"; "Whatsoever ye do, do oil to the 
glory of God" " Now unto God and our Father be glory for 
ever ",• " Glory to God in the highest "; "This people have / 
formed for myself they shall show forth my praise. " 

Who can read such passages, scattered all through the 
Bible, and regard our author's argument as reconcileable 
with them ? — Ed. 



108 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

where. Again. If this be the principle of the Divine 
conduct, then all beside God himself is merely a means, 
and is formed for an object wholly out of itself, and this 
is about equivalent to the extraction of all personality 
out ot it, and to the reduction of it to the condition and 
province of a mere thing. It takes all consideration 
and regard for finite intelligence as such, and in itself, 
out of the Divine mind, and cuts off all the intercourse 
of reciprocal personality between God and those he has 
made in his own image.* It is impossible for us to re- 
spect a being who has no regard for us — who uses us 
simply as a means, and does what he will with us on the 
ground merely of an object wholly ulterior and beyond 
us. Self-respect is as much an element of moral being 
as is respect for others, and supreme respect and rever- 
ence for God. All are correlates to each and their har- 
mony must not be disturbed by [a false] exegesis of the 
great end in creation, or in the administration of moral 
government. 

Again. If God's end is himself, then is it impossible 

*" It is impossible," &c. It is to be regretted that our 
author should have employed such language in relation to 
the great Father of our race — the All-wise — the All-good. If 
applied to a man, in relation to other men, it might pass 
without comment, but it seems utterly irrelevant in applica- 
tion to God. While the Bible unequivocally teaches us that 
the glory of God is the paramount object of regard to Him- 
self, to good angels, and to good men; and while it also 
teaches that man was created and is employed as "means " 
for promoting the glory of God, it teaches as clearly that he 
is regarded and treated by God as possessing "personality" 
and free agency, and by no means as " a mere thing." So 
far also from tolerating the insinuation that God, by pursu- 
ing his own glory as an ultimate end, must be devoid of 
" consideration and regard for finite intelligence as such, and 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 10$ 

that he should be really benevolent.* The antagonism 
lies in the two principles, that of acting for one's seL 
only, and that of acting for others. The two are not 
identical. They are exclusive of each other. If God's 
end lies in a resultant glory to himself, which he keeps 
ever in view as the reason of all his conduct, and the 
ground of his actions, then is there no benevolence in 
them. Benevolence must terminate in its object, and 
be a pure regard for it. That object must itself be not 
a means merely, but an end. The mind must terminate, 
and find the reason of its act in the object of regard. 
It must be an unselfish regard, and be thus in its pur- 
pose, and not for the sake of something else foreign to 

in itself," and that thus "all the intercourse of reciprocal 
personality between God and those he has made in his own 
image" is "cut off," the Bible declares the very opposite. 
The glory which God aimed at, seeks the reconciliation of 
man to his God, restores him from apostacy to intimate 
communion with Himself, and exalts him to a position of high 
intelligence and honor. — Ed. 

* "If God's, &c." The argument that follows is exceed- 
ingly plausible, and, as applied to men in their intercourse 
with one another, may be unanswerable, but so vast is the dis- 
parity between God and men, in greatness and in perfection, 
that the same rule of judgment cannot in all cases safely or 
correctly be applied to God, which we may properly apply 
to our fellow men. The fact is, that God, in making Him- 
self his supreme end, does not ignore, or necessarily leave 
out of view, much less interfere with and set aside the hap- 
piness of men, but includes it, as an expression of a very 
prominent part of his character which he must exercise in 
displaying, and acting for his own glory. For example, God 
glorifies himself in the highest degree in securing the salva- 
tion of men, and this at the same time constitutes the grand- 
est and most adorable expression of his pure benevolence. 
"God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we 
were yet sinners, Christ died for us," God so loved the 



110 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

it. Thus we instinctively reason in all the other rela- 
tions of these two principles. We despise the man who 
feigns regard for us, while his object is somewhere else. 
Benevolence is an ultimate principle, as well as sel- 
fishness, and necessarily exclusive of it. It is not in 
our being to approve the latter as the ground of action 
by whomsoever exercised. It. is less capable of our ap- 
proval in the Infinite than in the finite and no reasoning 
has ever availed to reconcile our moral convictions to 
it. ISTo comparative estimate of the greatness of God 
and of creatures has succeeded in this. We instinct- 
ively feel that for an intelligent being of any grade to 
act only for himself, and to make himself his end in 
what he does, is inconsistent and unworthy. All intel- 

world that, &c ,: He saves men for his own glory. It is a 
part of his glory to show his benevolence to them. As towards 
them, his feelings and conduct are benevolent in the highest 
form of manifestation, and yet it seems plain that a proper 
regard to Himself is a higher end, than such benevolent 
regard to their happiness, because He is greater than all other 
beings together. Nor can it be proved that a supreme regard 
to Himself in all that he does, nullifies or renders impossible 
the exercise of benevolence towards men. He does not, 
however, ' 'act for Himself only" while he acts for others. He 
acts for Himself chiefly, while he acts sincerely for their good. 
His benevolence to the creature is "a pure regard to it," but 
does not imply a supreme regard to it. God's " resultant 
glory" exhibits in this case the reality and intensity of benev- 
olence-- a true regard to the happiness of the object, as the 
antecedent of divine action. The argument of our ingenious 
author seems harshly to insinuate that if God makes his own 
glory his end, he is guilty of an unworthiness, and even of sel- 
fishness. He was led, perhaps, into this unwarrantable course 
of remark, by overlooking the palpable fact, as it stands out in 
the Bible, and even to the eye of reason, that, in the present 
case, while God acts for Himself as end, he as really and clearly 
acts for the sake of others, benevolently — he seeks their ever- 
lasting happiness- — as a subordinate but most valuable end. 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. Ill 

ligenee is homogeneous in its principles, and acts legit- 
imately on the same basis of character and purpose- 
God is benevolent in the same sense as he requires us 
to be, and it is by a real outgo and concentration of the 
affections and views and object of his infinite mind on 
that which is external to himself. This is no want of 
self-respect, but of the nature of pure intelligence, and 
characteristic of it. It is no sacrifice of the Divine 
glory, but the method of it, as a result, not made di- 
rectly the end, but coming incidentally out of the na- 
ture and end of the action. The glory of God is an inci- 
dent to his conduct and character, and not the direct design 
and end of them. 

It infallibly must be resultant of the perfections and 
work of such a being as he is, and must be so recog- 
nized and regarded by all pure intelligence, and all the 
more that it is an incident and not the end ; and that 
his own work is a goodness and a benevolence truly, 
and not the likeness and show of these qualities, for the 
sake of any mere resultant, issued object. This is the 
relation of glory to responsible action in all intelligent beings. 
It is incidental to their conduct, and not its direct object and 
end. We reckon it a counterfeit and an un worthiness 
when it assumes to be the end. Virtue is innately dis- 
interested and self-sacrificing or self-forgetful. Kind- 
ness, to be genuine, must seek another's good, and have 
no ulterior selfish regard. Make happiness or glory 
your [ultimate] end, and all will count it an unworthi- 
ness. Do right, because it is right, and virtue, and 
duty, and your happiness and honor will be established 
in the view of all right minded beings. Glory is rather 



112 THE END IN MOKAL GOVERNMENT. 

a quality attributed to one, than an end acted on by him. 
The principle here stated applies to the Infinite as well 
as the finite, and no scriptural form of expression need 
be so interpreted as to contravene it. If "God made all 
things for himself," it was that they might love and 
honor him, according to the dictates of this principle. 
If he " made the wicked for the day of evil," it does 
but express, in the way of carrying out the parallelism 
of the passage, the connection between crime and its 
punishment under a divine moral government. The 
principle is one, which, from the very nature of virtue 
and laws of the intelligence, is of universal application 
to mind and its responsible issues.* 

3d. Is then the greatest good the ultimate end in moral ac 
tion ? This phrase is equivocal,and therefore objectionable. 

^Reference on the above subject may profitably be made 
to the elaborate discussion of President Edwards, (Works, 
Vol. Ill) ; to a review of that discussion by President Day 
in the American Biblical Repository, for January, 1843, in 
the article entitled "Benevolence and Selfishness"; to the 
Second Series of the Essays from the Princeton Review, 1847, 
Essay II; and to President Dwight's System of Theology, 
Vol. I., Sermon I., from which the following extract, as 
embodying the true Bible doctrine, is taken: Having, in 
the body of the sermon, demonstrated the existence of God, 
and remarked (1) ' ' How great, awful, and glorious a Being 
is God "; (2) "How plainly are all beings absolutely depend- 
ent on God for their existence, their attributes, and their 
operations "; (3) " Of this universe God must, of necessity, 
be the sole and absolute proprietor "; (4) " Of the universe 
he is, of course, the only Ruler," the author adds : — "The 
nature of this vast work, and the wisdom and power dis- 
played in it, prove, beyond debate, that it was made for 
some end suited to the greatness aud number of the means which 
cure employed. This end, originally so valuable as to induce 
him to commence and to continue this mighty work, must ever 
be equally valuable in his view. But it can never be 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 113 

It may lie in the moral sphere, and may lie out of and be- 
low it. It may mean physical good, or moral good. It 
may be the greatest happiness or the greatest virtue. 
Each is a good "per se " and " sui generis." The one 
relates to sentient relations and the other to those which 

accomplished, except by His own government of all things: 
and (5) it is equally evident that this end must be Himself. Be- 
fore God made the universe there was nothing beside him. 
Whatever motive prompted him to this great work, must, 
of course, have been found in himself ; because, beside 
him there was nothing. It must, also, have been found in 
himself, because, when other beings existed, all were nothing 
in comparison with him ; and, therefore, in the same com- 
parison, undeserving of his regard. But this end could not 
respect any change in himself ; any increase, diminution, or 
alteration, of his greatness, power, and glory. It was, there- 
fore, the manifestation of himself alone which could be the end 
of this mighty work. Himself is the sum of excellence ; of 
all that is great, or wise, or good. The manifestation of 
himself is, therefore, only the manifestation of boundless 
excellence to the creatures which he has made. The mani- 
festation of all attributes, though capable of being made in 
declarations, is principally discerned in actions. Excellence, 
therefore, is discovered, chiefly, by doing what is great, and 
wise, and good. All this is so evident that it needs no illus- 
tration." 

' ' God, when he intended to disclose his perfections to the 
universe, intended, therefore, to exhibit them chiefly, by an 
endless course of action, in which wisdom, greatness, and 
goodness, should be supremely, and most clearly discovered. 
The highest blessedness, he has told us, and, therefore, the 
greatest glory, is found in communicating good, and not in 
gaining it ; in giving, and not in receiving. To this decision 
Reason necessarily subjoins her own Amen. The great 
design of God in all things is, therefore, to do good bound- 
lessly, and forever ; and in this conduct to disclose himself, 
as the boundless and eternal good # * * # In this wonder- 
ful work how divinely great and good does God appear ! 
How deserving of all admiration, love, homage, obedience 
and praise! How amazing the wonders which he has done \ 
How much more amazing the transcendent purpose for 
which they were done !" — Ed. 
8 



114 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

are moral. If the former is intended by the phrase, it is 
liable to the objections already considered. If the lat- 
ter is meant, it is undoubtedly genuine, and only brings 
us to the positive side of our subject. 

4th. What is the ultimate end in moral govern- 
ment? 1. It is of the nature of morality. It is in kind 
like the rule it administers and uses for it's accomplish- 
ment. It correlates with conscience rather than sense. 
It is an end in morals rather than physics, or aesthetics, 
or the intellect. It is an end in the spirit, and in rela- 
tion to law, and right, and duty, and desert, and is 
therefore generically in the sphere of all morality, whose 
interest it has in charge. A spiritual rule is adminis- 
tered for a spiritual reason, — the end of the administra- 
tion will be a spiritual end. It will be for the sake of 
character and rectitude, and in the interests and behalf 
of an end in the spirit. It will be for a spiritual excel- 
lency. It will be a righteous administration for righte- 
ousness' sake— and hence and chiefly, the end in moral 
government is — 2. A spiritual rectitude. Nothing is better 
than righteousness, and nothing more ultimate [ulterior] 
in the moral sphere. It is a good in itself and the high- 
est good, and to administer a moral government on the 
principle of it, and in its interests and for its sake is the 
highest conceivable end of its administration. Moral 
government cannot find a reason beyond a perfect 
righteousness, or an end higher or more ultimate than 
the conscience of God. He administers a moral gov- 
ernment on the basis of all righteousness, because it is 
of his nature to do so. The perfect spiritual excellency of 
God leads him into all rectitude in his moral administration. 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 115 

He ever acts conscientiously in what he does, and because it 
is right. An inherent righteousness is the method of the 
Deity — and if it is asked why? the answer is— be- 
cause in this there is perfect excellence of spirit, and the 
highest end of moral being. In this the " surnmum 
bonum " is reached, and there is nothing and need be 
nothing beyond it, which shall be a reason for it. It is an 
ultimate purpose, and an ultimate idea. It may expand 
into all the economies of justice and mercy, in truth and 
love; and every grace of spirit may be fostered under 
it, and every subordinate good be promoted by it, as 
they doubtless are, but what more ultimate [rather, 
what ulterior] principle can be given as its reason and 
ground 1 What more ultimate reason for a moral act 
than that it is right, and according to the Divine con- 
science, and to its representative in those made after 
the likeness of God ? Shall it be this, that it makes us 
happy ? But it makes us happy because it is right. If 
it were not right, it would afford no legitimate ground 
of happiness. Shall it then be that it tends to glorify 
God % This it does for the same reason, because it is 
right. If not right, it would not glorify him. The 
glory of God lies in this very thing, that he prosecutes all 
righteousness for righteousness" sake. For him to prose- 
cute a thing in form right, but for some other reason, 
and to some other end, would be no glory to him. And 
were it possible that he should act on other principles, 
the universe could esteem it not otherwise than an aber- 
ration and un worthiness. 

Shall we then assign " the general good " as the rea- 
son for a right action % But if not right, and not con- 



116 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

scientiously clone for its Tightness, what good would it 
do f A principle so base and hypocritical would need 
the intervention of a purer virtue and a better faith to 
give it the attributes of goodness and extract its wrongs. 
Conscience will accept no other end than that here 
stated, nor does the word of God. Neither does logic 
or reason demand a further answer. This describes a 
perfect moral government, administered for a perfect 
moral reason. It is a basis of righteousness, and a super- 
structure of righteousness, in accordance with a right- 
eous rule. This is the highest .good, because a perfect 
good, and to ask for a reason behind or beyond it, eith- 
er in the sense or the spirit, is like inquiring why God 
is good, or why the intuitions of the senses or of the 
reason are as they are. We are already at an ultimate 
idea, and may as well inquire why God is, as inquire 
further for the principle and ground of his operation. 

Thus then we have the rule, with its application and 
its principle of application in the moral sphere. This 
rule is a divinely communicated property of the intelli- 
gence which God has given, claiming of that intelli- 
gence, as a personal agency, a perfect spiritual rectitude^ 
on its own account, and for its lightness' sake. It is the 
demand of our moral being that " we be partakers of 
the Divine nature," and be " perfect as our Father in 
heaven is perfect." 

From the main drift of these discussions, which we 
here arrest, some very obvious conclusions may be 
stated : 

1st. The unity and simplicity of the principles of the 
moral sphere and of their legitimate action. It is the Divine 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 117 

conscience and its correlate in created intelligence, ful- 
filling their dictates in right action, for its own sake. 
It is but the claim and fulfillment of a perfect spiritual 
excellency in its own right, and because it is such. The 
rule, the application of it, and the ground of it, are 
properly subjective and in our own souls. They com- 
prise right, responsible action, for the inherent excel- 
lency and perfectness of it, in a moral being, and as 
essentially his highest good and aim ; — a conformity to 
the spiritual being of God and that likeness to him in 
which all finite intelligence is originally created. If the 
moral rule were a calculation of expedients, or a search 
for economical results, we might despair of finding it. 
Indeed it would, on these terms, be an "ignis fatuus," 
and must forever elude our grasp, and an intelligible 
moral government would be an impossibilty. 

2d. A divine moral government is appreciable by the finite. 
The element of conscience is the same in the created 
and the uncreated. In the one it is a God-send from 
the other, and recognizes and comprehends the princi- 
ples of morals in each. It would as soon detect a falsi- 
ty in the one as in the other, and as indubitably know 
that it is a falsity. To this element in the finite, God 
commends himself in the oft repeated passages of his 
word, of which the following are examples : " Shall not 
the Judge of all the earth do right f "Are not my ways 
equal, saith the Lrod V .But why make the appeal if 
there is no power of discrimination in the direction of 
the reference ? Why not go to the beasts of the field 
with it ? The same element of being is conceded in all 
divine, moral manifestations to us, and in all praise of 



IIS THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

God, and worship, love and service. " He that cometh 
to God must believe that he is," and know that "no 
unrighteousness is in him." Have but a doubt here, 
and you embarrass the relations of a moral economy. 
The character of God must be a transparency. We 
must be able to look up into the face of God, and into 
his heart, and see nothing wanting there. This only 
makes religion possible or worship a virtue. Fix but 
one stain on the Influite, and a moral universe is blasted. 
Shall God be false to truth, and disregardful of virtue ? 
Ah ! who shall trust him any more, or rest their hopes 
upon him 1 The worship of God is intelligent just so 
far as he is appreciated, and in respect to the funda- 
mental principles of morals nothing must be compro- 
mitted in the character and relations of God. The Di- 
vine relations to wrong must be appreciable. Make 
God the proponent of it, [as a part of the Divine plan 
or chosen method], and you mar his character. You 
may give all the reasons for such a dogma which the 
most fertile ingenuity can devise, and you fail to satisfy 
the mind. It contravenes the first elements in morals, 
and it always will, and no advance of mind will sur- 
mount the difficulty. The Infinite and the eternal can 
never explain the problem. It is inherently inexplica- 
ble. The attempt would be nothing but an effort to 
make a wrong a right, and reduce a sin to a virtue. 
Some things may be as perfectly known now as ever. 
We may be as fully confident now as ever, that " no lie 
is of the truth," and that " it is impossible for God to 
lie," and that it is equally impossible for him to be 
' ; tempted with evil," or to ordain and inaugurate that 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. ] 19 

which he forbids and hates. Let the position be, that 
God wills the existence of sin, and has ordained it in 
order for it to exist, then he wills that his law should be 
broken, for " sin is the transgression of the law," and 
as God wills nothing without good reason and only what 
is for the best, then the breaking of his law is some- 
thing better than the keeping of it, and, as before, 
wrong is better than right — and there it follows that 
right is not best, and that sin is better than holiness, 
and as such God chooses it, in some instances at least, 
and "for his own glory" weaves it into the scheme of 
the universe. But admit the position that God for some 
reason wills the being of sin and wrong, and then it 
follows that it is right to oppose the will of God, for 
certainly it is right to oppose the being of sin ; it is right 
for all men always to keep the law of God, and there- 
fore it is right to do what is not best, and best to do 
what is not right. But again, as the will of God is al- 
ways right, then it is right to do wrong, for God wills 
it ; and wrong to do right, for that opposes his will — 
and thus every kind of medley and confusion of moral 
ideas comes in under the shadow of a position so fatal 
and false as the one suggested. We do not need the 
light of eternity to show its fallacy. The opposite truth 
is perfectly obvious now. 

3d. The good which succeeds on [or follows] wrong, is 
through opposition to it. It is not a consequence, but a 
counteraction. It is not resultant of it, but an inter- 
vention against it. It is good, rebuking wrong and in 
despite of it. Who would say that a bad fracture is 
the means of getting a bone well set, or a frightened 



120 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

horse the means of the skill that drives him in safety, 
or that the waywardness of a child is the means of 
making him more obedient % Such a phraseology would 
demoralize a language, and reduce to chaos all forms of 
thought and speech. Sin does no good and tends to 
none. It is only an evil, a vice, and a crime, and a mis- 
cjhief. All good in relation to it is in remedy of it, and 
\\ prevention of its mischief, and in staying its bad ef- 
fects. Why not then locate the idea of good as related 
to it within the precincts of that remedy and preven- 
tion ? Why take it back to that which by its wrong 
and mischief forms the necessity for the remedy in re- 
pair of its evils, and the securing of good which it 
tended to undermine and destroy? The help in the 
premises is in a recuperative providence. The relief is not 
because sin is, but because God is to circumvent it. It 
is because he lives to bring order out of confusion and 
light out of darkness ; and who would say that this 
gives a good reason for confusion and darkness, and is 
a valid ground for instituting them 1 Sin is a catas- 
trophe, and shall we say that recovery from it is a rea- 
son for it ? that the parrying of the blow is the reason 
for giving it, and that salvation by the cross is the 
strategic ground of an economy of wrong ? The 
method of this reasoning is utterly vicious. It would 
annihilate a moral government, and sap the foundation 
of its principles in the attempt to resolve sin in a theis- 
tic argument, and give a reason for it in the economy 
of God. We ought in all fairness to locate the good in 
the premises at the point where it belongs, and not 
announce it for the relief of that of which it forms no 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 321 

part, but of which it is the correction and counteraction 
It is of the sufficiency of God to elicit good out of evil, 
and to instruct the universe to stand in awe of sin by 
his dealings with it, and to bring honor to virtue by the 
ruin attendant on wrong. But even this he could not 
do were sin itself a Divine method for finite being, or 
were it in any way in accordance with the will of God. 
This of itself would vitiate his relations to it, and ren- 
der him powerless for any good respecting it. It would 
be devising an evil for the sake of correcting it, and 
proposing a wrong for the sake of right, and all minds 
would see the pageantry of it, and hold it an unworthi- 
ness. God could not respect himself in it, and we could 
not respect him in view of it. The term glory, as related 
to sin, can only be that sin is in no sense of him, or his 
economy, and that all his relations to it are antagonistic 
and repudiative. And hence 

4th. There is no good reason for the existence of sin. To 
seek a good and justifiable strategic reason for an econ- 
omy of wrong, is the parent vice of our old theories on 
this whole subject. But from the nature of the case no 
such reason can be given. On what principle would we 
assign a good reason for wrong % — such a reason as 
should satisfy God, and reconcile him to the occurrence 
of sin ? The idea is a solecism. Shall God be recon- 
ciled to the infraction of his law, to the resistance of his 
will, and to rebellion against his authority and govern- 
ment ? Can he look complacently on the existence of 
a moral wrong ? If there is a good reason for it he may 
do this ; and as beings made in his image we may too. 
And if there is a good reason for transgression, a&tj *iod 



122 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

sees it, and is reconciled to it, and we may be, tnen he 
is not opposed to it, and will not punish it, and then too 
there is no good reason against it, and wrong is better 
than right, and has a better claim to be, so far as it does 
exist, and it is no calamity. God would not oppose his 
own strategic conceptions, or be averse to that which 
there is a good reason for, and which in its place is as 
he would have it, and of course the best thing possible, 
where and as it exists. There is a " reductio ad absur- 
dum " integrally in such a position, and the better way 
is to cut loose from it altogether, and follow the lead of 
our moral convictions, in our theoretic views on this 
subject. The intuitions of reason cannot mislead us 
here, and they indubitably assert that sin is an unright- 
eousness, and a wrong against conscience and right and 
reason and truth, and that God must see it to be such, 
and could not see a good reason for it to be ; that it is 
essentially unreason and unrighteousness, and God must 
know that it is such — and we must know that the at- 
tempt to give a good reason for it, and a reason why 
God should ordain it in a scheme of things and make it 
an element in a Divine ecQnomy, does, so far as it may 
be successful, have no other effect than to convict the 
Most High of folly and wickedness. It puts him in 
wrong relations to both reason and virtue, and assumes 
that God may have a good reason for the being of that, 
the being of which is without reason and without right. 
But this we know cannot be. The better, because the 
true way of resolving the matter, is to come over wholly 
to the position that sin is altogether unreasonable and 
wrong in all its l-elations, and that God, as a being of 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 123 

infinite wisdom and purity, plans no wrong or unreason, 
and enters into propositional relations with the existence 
of no unrighteousness. This at least adjusts a pure 
morality to the premises and all the other difficulties, if 
any, may be met in their course. Indeed, what have 
we to do with difficulties when we thus grasp a neces- 
sary truth of the intelligence ? We must adopt it and 
act on it ; and we do, and so do all men in the practical 
convictions and daily conclusion of life. No man acts 
on the principle that there is a good reason for wrong, 
or that it is right to plan or arrange or devise it, or that 
any pure-minded being will do this. The contriver of 
a wrong is universally held to be a wrong-minded being. 
It is impossible to conceive of the pious contrivance and 
arrangement of a wrong. It is like conceiving a thing 
to be and not to be, at the same time. The dictates of 
common sense may be here appealed to, which uniform- 
ly treats the thought of wickedness as sin, and accounts 
sin a mislead, a folly and a vice, equally unreasonable 
and wrong. 

5th. God has a discretionary sovereignty, ivithin the limits 
of all righteousness, in his treatment of sin, and in his deal- 
ing towards it. As it is not a divine strategy, God is not 
responsible for it, or its mischiefs. He will deal with it 
in infinite wisdom, and take the best methods of antag- 
onism towards it, for the reduction of it and for instruc- 
tion in view of it. As the fact and the folly and the 
mischief of sin, are not of God, he may seek a remedy 
and relief for it, — as a mislead, he may show it pity — 
as a folly, all long-suffering and forbearance — as a crime 
and a wickedness, his righteous indignation. He may 



124 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

make his wrath and power, or his compassion and grace 
known in reference to it. As God's providence towards 
t is a discretionary administration of a righteous being 
toward a wrong, and within the sphere of depravity in 
finite cause, his wisdom in the premises is best seen by 
us in the line of his acts toward it. What God has 
done, and is doing, and has revealed that he will do, 
forms our best chapter of instructions in the premises. 
It will be the legitimate administration of moral gov- 
ernment. It will be in the end of virtue, [with a view 
to promote virtue], and will compromise no morality. 
As he has prohibited sin, and uttered his veto against 
it, in our being, in his providence, and in his word, he 
may see it best that " the wicked fall into the pit which 
they have digged." This is a question of moral rule, 
and does not correlate with the idea of a simple, physical 
omnipotence in its incipient treatment. Character must 
be a discretion, and a moral system must have a moral 
method and gain its ends in that way. The resources 
of physical power are indeed associated with it, but in 
its incipient probationary form those resources are not 
its leading type. A probation is of it, while the arm of 
power is seen more [clearly] in its retributive and result- 
ant dispensations. 

Goodness may rebut wrong, though it could not orig- 
inate it. It may have a wide margin of discretion in 
its methods of rebuke, and discomfiture and overthrow. 
It may take its own time and its own way, — may make 
that wrong a self-reprover. Goodness may lay pitfalls 
and snares in the way of sin, and "show the way of 
transgressors to be hard." A good being may interlock 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 125 

with sin in many ways in rebutting and securing his 
own good ends. A catastrophe wrought out by sin may 
be the most effectual rebuke, and through a divine suf- 
ficiency may become the occasion of the life of the 
world. God may even yield his Son to wicked hands, 
when a sacrifice of atonement is needed, saying to the 
bands of ungodly men, "this is your hour and the power 
of darkness." God is not obliged always to do all he 
can to prevent sin, nor is he restricted, except within 
conscientious limits in his methods of remedying it. 
Moral' methods may have the advantage, and Christ says 
to his disciples — " Hereafter I will not talk much with 
you, for the prince of this world cometh and hath noth- 
ing in me," and thus it is that a product of sin becomes 
a means of good. It is by being translated out of the 
economy and kingdom of its cause into that of the over- 
ruling providence of God. And hence, too, sin is al- 
ways its own rebuke, and wrong becomes an argument 
for right. It cannot but be so, for it is essential unrea- 
son, as well as essential unrighteousness : and intelli- 
gence cannot but see and know that it is such — and 
hence the despair and remorse, and self-degradation and 
reproval consequent on sin. But this is no argument 
in favor of wrong, either to the finite or the Infinite ; to 
say that it is so is to step at once out of a moral sphere — 
to lose sight of its very elements, and to destroy the 
foundation on which it rests. And hence 

6th. The terms of a Divine glory [to be realized] out of 
sin. They are, that it is in no sense of God, and that 
the sphere of the Infinite must be that of an inherent 
and appreciable righteousness. Glory is something 



126 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

which is attributed by one intelligent being to another 
for his real or supposed excellency. But for created in- 
tellect, God would derive no glory from his works. 
There must be an eye to see beauty, and a conscience 
to approve, and to honor rectitude. The glory of God, 
as connected with our subject, is not merely for a phys- 
ical, aesthetic or intellectual excellency, but for his rela- 
tions in the moral sphere. It is chiefly and superlative- 
ly for the Divine conscience, and for the essential right- 
eousness of God, and the appreciated rectitude of all 
that he does in moral government. This must b'e right, 
and be seen to be right by the intelligence which he has 
created. Beyond its apprehension of the perfection of 
his character, it will not glorify and worship him. These 
acts are not a vague and meaningless bestowment with- 
out reason, and without apprehension of a sufficient 
ground for them in the recognized being, character and 
works of God. We must know him and his relations 
to right and wrong, and he must meet the approval of 
conscience, or we cannot ascribe glory to his name. 
This is ever a postulate in the outset. We must see, 
or take for granted, the righteousness of God. But we 
know that a propositional relation to wrong [the rela- 
tion of a proposer or projector of it as part of his method 
of government] is not right ; and that no good being 
will stand in that relation to it. Conscience will not 
approve it. It confounds moral distinctions. We can- 
not but say that to propose wrong is wrong. And here 
has been the difficulty hitherto. It has been a conflict 
between conscience and the supposed necessities of the 
fact that sin does exist. And with the progress of the 



THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 127 

discussion and of the ages, conscience does not yield her 
point, and she never can. It is not the antagonism in a 
divine moral government between right and wrong, 
where both are in and of it, and where both move on 
according to a Divine purpose and will in the pageantry 
of a combined movement, having been introduced as a 
Divine expedient by the same overruling intelligence, 
that we approve ; but [we approve the doctrine] that 
one is of God, and the other not — -that the one is the 
way of the Infinite, and the other against it — that the 
whole strategy and economy of God is an inherent vir- 
tue, and that sin is wholly, both as an economy and a 
fact, from another source. Thus only can we appreciate 
the character and excellency of God, and glorify him 
for his methods with sin. We suggest, 

Finally. The harmony of moral truth as seen in its theo- 
retic statement and in its extant history and development. 
The ultimate rule in moral government, its method and 
its end, are one. It is a virtue for virtue's sake, and 
conscience approves and claims it. But this is not more 
a principle of pure truth than it is an obvious feature of 
the divine administration. All the precepts of the word 
of God — all the law from Sinai, and all the grace of the 
gospel [are founded upon it as a basis]. The appeal is 
here, in every duty — -every obligation — eveiy precept — 
every command — every principle of character and des- 
tiny, as seen in the probationary methods of God or in 
a resultant retribution — and we have the exponent of 
it, in a well conditioned conscience and in the identity 
of our moral being with the moral being [of Him] in 
whose image man was made — and hence, too, the ap- 



128 THE END IN MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

propriate aim and great duty of man is the supremacy 
of conscience and the obedience of the will and of the 
passions to its dictates. Give an enlightened conscience 
universal sway— bring the " is " to the " ought" and by 
the grace of God you have accomplished the conversion 
of the world to Christ, and attained in human history 
the end of the Divine administration. 



MORAL GOVERNMENT ITS CONSUMMATION. 129 



CHAPTER X. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT — ITS CONSUMMATION. 

[a] There are two kingdoms in the moral sphere--* 
that of right and that of wrong — of holiness and sin — 
of God and the devil. Both are possible and both are 
actual ; the first is normal and legitimate — the other 
abnormal and illegitimate, and yet inherently a liability 
under moral government — not of Divine institution, 
but necessarily possible in the moral sphere from the 
prerogatives of free will, and the whole doctrine of ac- 
countable action and the nature of virtue, and the essen- 
tial glory of a moral system, — and which has become 
actual, without reason, without God, and contrary to his 
will, and only in the aberrations of free will in finite 
cause. 

[b~\ These two kingdoms are every way different from, 
and antagonistic to, each other, — in origin — in spirit — 
in aim and tendency and end. The first is of God and 
like him, and in all harmony with the highest good, — 
the other is born of the wrong working of finite cause, 
tending only to all evil. I. John, 3:8. "For this pur- 
pose the son of man was manifested that he might de- 
stroy the works of the devil." 

[c] This antagonism will appear with various results 
in the probationary stage of the economy. These ap- 
9 



130 MORAL GOVERNMENT ITS CONSUMMATION. 

pliances for right are resistible — character is formed and 
tested, and destiny incurred. Moral, probationary 
methods, are in their nature suasory and resistible — they 
will strengthen and be more prevalent with the progress 
of humanity and the ages. The ages to come will be 
signalized for the triumphs of virtue and right. 

[d] Hence the [final] success of the right. 1st. Be- 
cause it is right and self-consistent, and inherently ex- 
cellent and self-approved. 2d. From the mutual adap- 
tation and correlations of mind and truth and right. 
They were made for each other by the same author. 
There is a consent between them that seeks prevalence 
over all the obliquities of that law in the members. 
3d. From the direction and intent of providence. This 
is in conflict with wrong and in unison with the right 
and good. It is the God of the Bible, combating sin, 
and bringing out good and glorious results from all that 
is. 4th. From the Spirit of God, as a co-ordinate agent 
for the truth and right. This is the Comforter prom- 
ised "to convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and 
judgment." 5th. From the peculiar methods of the 
gospel in grace, recovery and sanctification. Rom. 7th 
and 8th chapters. It conquers by love — it subdues by 
condescension and kindness — by substitution, mercy, 
and compassion — forgiveness, restoration and accept- 
ance in the condescension of God. It appeals to the 
constituent elements of our being, against our malig- 
nant passions and sins. It is the voice of reason and 
love, against unreason and unrighteousness. 

[e] Divine power in retribution. This is in its nature 
a compulsory administration ; it is resultant of a proba- 



MORAL GOVERNMENT ITS CONSUMMATION. 131 

tionary one, and consequent upon it. It is suasory and 
resistible in its methods, — it is the legitimate sphere of 
divine, physical power, in which God takes into his own 
hands the results of the elective probation, and assigns 
rewards and punishments in righteousness and grace. 

[/] Divine communications on the subject, Matt, xxv 
— doctrine of the judgment day — inherently a feature 
and part of a moral system. Conduct, character, award, 
destiny are in it, and the exercise of divine power, in 
its administration. 

[g] Final state of the unrecovered, — physical and 
moral. (1) Consignment to a place of suffering — to a 
state of suffering ; this involves a union of body and 
soul, — these both may be made indestructible. Inflic- 
tions are adapted to such a state. (2) Moral — rebel- 
lious, unsubdued state of the will, — impenitent, unholy 
remorse of conscience — despair — all mental suffering as 
naturally incident to that state. There is a law of mind 
in this — after sufficient probation, truth hardens the soul. 

[h] Final state of the righteous — Heaven as a place 
— as a state — angels — men — elements of its blessedness 
— rightness — harmony with God — sense of recovery — 
of forgiveness — grace — communion and fellowship with 
God — Christ — angels — redeemed saints — renewed 
friendships of earth — heavenly employments — adoration 
— worship — praise — perfect love — Divine manifestations 
in all fullness and perfection. 

p] Perpetuity of the state of the lost and the saved 
as above. Revealed communications. This state in its 
nature final ; — to form a character and reap its destiny 



132 MORAL GOVERNMENT ITS CONSUMMATION. 

is the all of a moral system, — there is nothing more re- 
sultant — there can be nothing after. 

[j~\ The number of the lost. 1. It is not revealed, 
nor ascertainable, definitely. 2. The resources and in- 
fluences of moral government increase with the progress 
of the ages ; moral means strengthen, and become more 
effectual. Sin is a mistake as well as a mislead. Races 
that do not break away from God in the outstart, or 
early, we may hope never will. Sin is without good 
reason — is essential unreason, and right minded intelli- 
gence will soon get beyond the actual liability of it, and 
confirmation in holiness will be seen to be as much a 
law of mind as the appointment of God. So in case 
of the elect angels. "The ages to come" will show 
progress and triumph to the cause of the redeemed, till 
the latter day fully comes — that millenium of truth and 
grace, which shall gather in the great majority of man- 
kind, and leave comparatively but a remnant among 
the lost. 

[k~] The final relations of Christ to the universe. They 
will be those of one who has accomplished his special 
mission, and who returns to his original "status" as 
God the Son, and God as God will be all in all. This 
would be " habitat," of the resultant and final condition 
of the universe as a moral system. The God-head, so 
to speak, would resume primeval relations, and the 
universe be fixed in its eternal state. Yet will Christ 
and his work of mediation, as a work accomplished, 
abide in honor and praise in its results, and in the hearts 
of all holy intelligences, throughout eternity. 

[7] The influences of the "divine-human" on other 



MORAL GOVERNMENT ITS CONSUMMATION. 133 

orders of creation throughout the universe. This is 
but dimly revealed — but the universe is one — there is 
one God, and wherever he has made intelligent beings 
there is a moral system analogous to this. It will have 
correlates, and may be influenced by what transpires 
here and by results here brought out. God is no wiser 
elsewhere than here, and will show the same perfections 
and moral government every where. 

What relations spirits have to space, we know not ; 
but intelligence is the crowning work of creation, and, 
it is fair to conclude, will not be wanting elsewhere 
more than here. A moral system is of course where 
God is, and it is homogeneous and will have mutual re- 
lations and reciprocities, and they may be more [clearly 
shown] in the progress and results of things than yet 
appears. 



134 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTER XL 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO THE GLORY OP GOD. 

[a] Glory is a tribute rendered, rather than an end 
sought. It is a reflection from right action and upon 
it, rather than the object in it. A right action, done 
because it is right, is glorious, and can [not] but be es- 
teemed so, and all right-minded beings will account it a 
glory and honor to its author. 

[b] Glory, as an ascription rendered, would be impos- 
sible without created intelligences to bestow it, and a 
universe in which the perfections of God are manifested. 
God would intuitionally and from eternity know his own 
perfections and excellency, but this he would as well 
know without their manifestation as with. It would be 
the knowledge of himself A right-minded being will see 
and appreciate his own qualities and excellency, though 
he may not make the exhibition of them for the sake of 
self-praise the ground of action. He may be thrown 
into circumstances in which self-vindication is proper 
and needful. 

[c] Self-respect is a legitimate principle and element- 
ary in moral science and in a moral system. A due re- 
gard to our reputation and honor, is consistent with the 



TO THE GLORY OF GOD. 135 

statements above. The rights of moral beings in their 
reciprocal relations are of account and to be maintained, 
and they may be so brought into question as to author- 
ize the appeal as in the Bible, "For mine own sake," 
"glory," <fcc, " will I do this," " nor give my glory to 
graven images." In conflict with error and wrong, 
God will not fail to assert the rights and prerogatives 
of the God-head, and it is glorious, as it is to vindicate 
the right any where. 

[d] The glory of God lies essentially in his righteous- 
ness. If he were not righteous, he would not be glorious. 
He is a being infinitely perfect in justice, rectitude, 
goodness and truth, and this is characteristic of ail his 
works and ways, and therefore is he glorious. 

[e] Hence, the basis of the Divine glory in creation 
— the perfections of God every where at work, and 
manifested in the proper work and ways of God, in 
creation, providence and redemption. The glory of a 
righteous character — -of the infinite perfections of God, 
[is seen in] conceiving and bringing forth such a uni- 
verse. Consider the nature, variety, extent and mag- 
nificent harmony of the works of God, in physical 
nature — consciousness — the bodily senses — the telescope 
— the microscope, — geology — mineralogy — optics — 
chemistry — physiology — astronomy — mechanisms of na- 
ture, — the wisdom and goodness of its provisions and 
grand design, — the movements of providence in it. 

[./'] The glory of a moral system. It has intelligence 
— likeness to God — free will, duty, — conduct — character 
— destiny — the appreciation of God — sense of rectitude 
—love, communion and fellowship in righteousness with 



136 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

God and all good and lovely beings — spiritual compan- 
ionship — -joy and bliss in moral rectitude, — the inter- 
ventions of grace — all that lies above the plane of a 
merely physical and sentient creation. 

[#] The glory of the moral universe — original design 
— a holy and happy universe in the love and likeness 
of God, — the divine administration to angels — to men, 
— administration in law — in grace — peculiar glory of 
grace in the perfection it manifests — in the character it 
forms, — Rom. 7th and 8th chapters, — the power of grace 
to sanctify — the motives of the gospel — the death of 
Christ for sin — the gift of the Holy Spirit — the require- 
ments of the gospel — the character it forms — the hope 
it inspires — the redemption it brings, and the good it 
secures — the moral excellency, bliss and glory of heaven. 
The glory of God as ascribed [to Him] in the com- 
munion and fellowship of heaven and by holy beings 
throughout eternity, — also as resultant of the moral 
sympathies and harmonies of creation, and of right- 
minded intelligence throughout the universe. 



TO THE HIGHEST GOOD. 137 



CHAPTER XII. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO THE HIGHEST GOOD. 

[«] Two ends may be contemplated in a moral sys- 
tem, — a happiness and a righteousness. 1. The first is 
sentient good, held in common for all sentient beings 
according to their kind ; — it is an expediency — an en- 
joyment — a passivity — a self-appropriation — a receptive, 
personal good — an end in ourselves — it is unbenevolent 
— makes self the center and all else the means. 2. 
Righteousness has its end in a principle of action — it is 
itself an activity — an energy — a benevolence — an un- 
selfish excellency — it is a moral worthiness, and abides 
in an atmosphere of moral sympathies and excellency — 
it is a dispenser, and dispenses according to truth and 
right and for their sake. 

[b~\ The two may not always be antagonistic : in in- 
telligent beings they should never be. They should 
coalesce and flow together in the same channels. 

[c] Happiness as an end is legitimate only when con- 
sistent with all righteousness and resultant of it. Phys- 
ical enjoyment may be irrespective of righteousness, 
but spiritual happiness can be derived only from it. The 
conscience is a correlate to all righteousness and will 



138 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

demand that we be right, in order to be happy. Hence 
atheism tends to barbarism — impiety to demoralization 
and degradation — hence the adage, " Honesty is the 
best policy," and hence 

[d] Happiness is the subordinate end. It should be 
and can properly be only in the element and founded on 
the principle of all righteousness. It is therefore rath- 
er the resultant of an end in action, than the end itself. 
Happiness is rather a reward than an end, — it is conse- 
quent on right action done for its own sake ; and be- 
cause it is right. 

[e] This is obviously the order as consistent with con- 
scious activities of mind. One cannot be happy against 
his conscience or without its approbation, which lies in 
the elements of all righteousness. God could not be 
happy, but that he is good and righteous. He is per- 
fectly happy, because perfectly righteous. 

[/] Happiness in moral beings is properly an inci- 
dental end. It is consequent on right action, — it is de- 
pendent on right action and a right state, and is secured 
in such a state and in a course prosecuted in its own 
interest and for its own sake. 

[#]Happiness is then inherently in and of the good 
that lies in right action and in moral rectitude of state, 
and is thus the concomitant and result of an end rather 
than an end sought in action itself. Hence, 

[/i] The highest good is moral goodness or righteousness. 
This combines both means and end, and is the ultimate 
end, and is thus the "summum bonum" beyond which 
we cannot and need not go. This end is not to be 
sought for the sake of any other, and is a perfection in 



TO THE HIGHEST GOOD. 139 

itself, and would be vitiated by being prosecuted for the 
sake of any thing else supposed to be more ultimate. 
This is the end of all ends, and describes the object [or 
aim] of an action and the reason for it. Do right be- 
cause it is right. This is morality — this is divine — this 
is of the nature of a moral system — it is of the nature 
of God. 

p] Writers have sought to combine both ends in one. 
This in a large and general sense may be done, as God 
has constituted the connections in a moral system. 
Goodness and moral rectitude will always be the great- 
est good in respect to happiness, and make it a blessing 
to be right. 



140 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTER XIII. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO THE INTELLECTUAL 
POWERS. 

[a] Two forms of being — the physical and the intel- 
lectual. 

[5] The intellectual essentially homogeneous — it has 
in common the cognitive, the sensitive, and the volun- 
tary element, or more comprehensively still, the recep- 
tive and the active powers. These elements of reason, 
sensibility and will are essential to mind, are appropriate 
to it, and all that are needful or possible to constitute it 
in personal agency and responsibility. To apprehend 
truth, — to feel and act in view of it, complete the neces- 
sary ideas in the premises, and make intellect obviously 
a subject matter perfect in its kind. 

[c] Likeness of the divine and of the human [intel- 
lect]. There must be a likeness in order to mutual 
communication, understanding, appreciation and fellow- 
ship. All the relations of the infinite and finite imply 
this, and all the correspondent emotions and reciproci- 
ties of authority and duty, love, prayer and praise — of 



TO THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS. HI 

father and child, &c. <fcc, and hence the Divine testis 
rnony at the creation of man — " Let us make man in 
our image — after our likeness. So God created man 
&c." This homogeneity and likeness is also manifest 
from the fact that there is only one economy of moral 
government for men, and for angels too — one law — 
one doctrine of responsibility — ■ one moral destiny of 
good or evil — one Bible — one Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the universal issues of one great scheme of moral rule, 
This is so, both subjectively and objectively — in the 
conscience and out. 

[d] The adaptation of man (the intellectual powers) to 
the methods of moral government. (1) The intellect, 
proper — the acquisition and retention of knowledge and 
ideas — the understanding in its province — the reason in 
the comprehension of truth — the imagination — associa- 
tion of ideas— comparison, contrast— all the powers for 
the acquisition, increase, and use of knowledge. (2) The 
conscience — susceptibility to moral impressions, discrim- 
ination of right and wrong — force of law — applicabili- 
ty of the doctrine of right. (3) The will — its volunta- 
riness — motive influence — power of contrary choice — 
sense of accountability — ground for character and des- 
tiny — adapted to the doctrine of rewards and punish- 
ments, to probation and retribution. 

[e] Moral government adapted to growth of mind — 
to the cultivation and expansion of its powers, and a 
real, and symmetrical and continued advancement in 
true manhood, up "into all the fullness of God." 
Truth is the element of mind, and truth is exhaustless 
and expanding. To finite mind there always will be 



142 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

more to know, — new associations and new experiences. 

[/] All virtue is possible to mind,— all excellence 
and glory. All the elements of moral government lead 
it out to this — the study and appreciation of God, his 
perfections, works and ways,— -all the possible combina- 
tions of truth, in all the progress of a moral system,—- 
the intercourse of mind through the universe with all 
minds and things, — the studies of eternity,— -the com- 
munings and bliss of heaven. 

Derived, created mind begins at zero, but will never 
cease expansion and approximation up to all the fullness 
of God, though it will never reach it. This will show 
the "asymptotes" of the moral sphere. 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 143 



CHAPTER XIV. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO HUMAN ABILITY, 

[a\ Two spheres of being, nature and the super- 
natural 

\b~] The first is simple effect, and " causa causata ;" 
the second, inherent cause — " causa causans." Its 
nature is that of self-activity and free will. It has a 
real, self-conscious personality, originating its own acts 
and voluntary states, with personal jurisdiction over 
them as to what they shall be, and when and how 
related. 

[ c ] Finite intelligence is dependent for its being, but its 
constituted nature is that of cause — intelligent, conscious cause, 
like its author, with the element of self control and self-causa- 
tion of its acts. 1. This is the conviction of conscious- 
ness. 2. This is essential to personality, like God's, or 
to the being a person in any proper sense. 3. This is 
essential to moral government, or a possible moral sys- 
tem. 4. This is taught in all God's treatment of us, in 
law and grace, — in all our treatment of each other, and 
in all our judgments on ourselves for our conduct 



1 14 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

5. But for this, responsibility would be a mistake and 
a falsity, incongruous, and incompatible. 

[d ] Human ability is properly descriptive of the reach 
and scope of our mental powers,— it is single in its ref- 
erence. The subdivision into natural and moral ability 
is unphilosophical and tending to lead astray. A moral 
inability is merely an unwillingness, — a disinclination — 
a will not, and might better be called by its right nam«. 
A disposition is no measure of an ability and no desci.i- 
tion of it. We are able and competent and obligated 
to act often contrary to our inclinations, dispositions, or 
desires. But for this, there could be no intelligent 
change of disposition, or of propensity or habit of 
mind or of heart. 

[e] To this sovereignty of personal will, moral gov- 
ernment is adapted. Its motives and methods in the 
formative stage of character, in probation, are resistible 
- — they are an appeal to our voluntary being, and involve 
an intelligent and conscious responsibility. 

Moral government is one of authority, reason, law, 
justice, rectitude and love, with reward and penalty. 
With this the doctrine of ability harmonizes — responsi- 
ble issues naturally grow out of it, and they are met 
responsively by the characteristics of our moral agency. 

THE POWER OF CONTRARY CHOICE. 

[ What follows on this subject was published in the New- 
Englander for May, 1860. ] 

The question whether the soul has the "power of 
contrary choice" is one of the utmost importance in its 
bearings upon theology, and all moral science. It is 
high time that the subject was thoroughly understood. 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 145 

The orthodox faith has lost much by its dullness of 
apprehension and its incompleteness here, and entirely 
failed of that " vantage ground" which it would have 
held but for its unwillingness to concede what is intui- 
tionally true at this point, and the common sense of 
men concedes in all the relations of life. Happy the 
day, for the cause of truth generally, and for the power 
and spread of the gospel, when our metaphysics on this 
and other subjects, shall agree with the acknowledged 
principles of common sense, and be but the philosophic 
and comprehensive statement of them ! Ask any man 
of a thousand you may meet, whether he thinks he 
could have done right yesterday when he did wrong, 
and he will say " Yes." It is the sentiment of common 
life, and of humanity, for all time, everywhere. Not 
whether he acted freely and with consent of will in do- 
ing wrong. That of course. But whether situated as 
he then was, he could have refrained from the wrong 
and done the right, and he will still say " Yes," if his 
conscience is tender, and bad theology does not come 
in his way. And he will sustain his position by asking 
further, " If I could not, how then was I responsible for 
my sin 1 If it was ' inevitable,' situated as I was, how 
am I answerable for it 1 If the temptations to it took 
away my power to the contrary, I feel absolved for 
what I could not help ;" and the conscience of mankind 
will go with him in this, philosophize about it as we 
may. 

It is not to be expected that a great mind of any 
given age should see all sides of all subjects, for all 
time. The error of the colossal " Treatise on the Will/' 
10 



146 MORAL GOYERNMENT AS RELATED 

is just at the point under review. No man has proved 
that choice is always as is the greatest apparent good, 
and it is not an intuitional idea. Edwards found it in 
the dialectics of previous periods, and accepted it with- 
out special investigation, we may hope. It was, too, a 
link in a chain and scheme of doctrine. It was not 
investigated on its intrinsic merits as a psychological 
question. It stood in the light of a consequence, and 
was for its sake. It was deemed needful to Divine 
government, though without good reason. The argu- 
ment was, that God could not be supreme, or secure 
results, unless he had sovereignty of all volitions and 
made them but modification of the infinite cause. But 
there never can be more than the "petitio principle 
here. You can only beg the question. Who knows 
that I always do what I think is best ? It seems to me 
far otherwise. The sense, of the inquiry is not altered 
if I add the phrase, what I think at the time is best. 
All volition is in the present tense. The statement, 
however expressed, must be tantamount to this, that all 
men always act from the conviction of what is the 
greatest good. And can this be said of all the foolish- 
ness, and lust, and wickedness of earth and hell ? The 
expression is a misnomer. It does not characterize the 
act. It has eredence for the sake of an end to be gained 
by it, and yet that end, when thus reached, falsifies a 
moral government and ignores the distinction between 
nature and the supernatural. 

If motives govern choice, with no power to the con- 
trary, then " the is" is the exponent of " the can be." 
Then the past could be only as it has been ; the present 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 147 

cannot be otherwise than as it is, or the future than as 
it will be. The forces are all " ah extra." We have 
no power to alter them, or their effects. The stream is 
from the beginning downward and onward, and we 
have no power to change its course. All is a Divine 
programme, and must be fulfilled in this way or the 
reins are taken out of the hands of God, and he has no 
way left to be supreme. It is an outside pressure on us, 
or one " ah extra" to ourselves, which is only to be 
yielded to, and which can only be yielded to freely, you 
may say. But even that you get not from the doctrine 
or the scheme it serves,but in spite of, and in exception 
to, them. These would be complete with this element 
left out. The whole subject is viewed theologically, 
and for a theological result. It is a mere matter of 
cause and effect to enable God to govern mind and 
secure results in the moral, as he does in the physical 
world. That the mind is free in the process, at the 
point of contact with it, is intuitionally learned indeed, 
but it does not belong to the scheme or the object of it, 
and does not make one hair white or black, in the mat- 
ter of results. All is from God, and resistless as the 
lightning, and all a Divine method to gain a Divine 
end. And in gaining that end, the mind is no real 
factor. It has no discretion, no power of resistance, no 
sovereignty over the issue. At any given point of 
wrong it could not hold up, for it has no power to the 
contrary. It goes as it is led, and because it is led. 
You say freely "Yes," as the wheel on its axle, or the 
joint in its socket, or the door on its hinges, and by 
subsidizing this foreign element to your doctrine you 



148 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

relieve thus empirically the unutterable repulsions of it. 
But in all this you do not describe the conscious intuitions 
of the mind in its free acts. The view is not authentic. 
More is wanting to it. It lacks vitality. It does 
not give object or character to the freedom it admits. 
There is in it no discretion, no power of discrimination, 
no election as to what the act shall be in the given cir- 
cumstances. You have not got up into the region of 
personal cause. There is no self-origination of conduct, 
or character, or destiny. You have not risen into the 
region of the " supernatural." You have not stepped 
from the tread-mill policy of mere physics into the ap- 
propriate sphere of the will. The man as yet is but a 
mere tool in the hands of another — a thing acting as it 
is acted on — a means, worked by another for the sake 
of something beyond itself. And the picture is un- 
meaning. The view is lame and inadequate. It fails 
integrally to complete the intimations of consciousness 
in our free acts, and tantalizes us with the name of free- 
dom, while it takes its gist and import, aye, its real life 
away, and makes it at once without significance or 
value. 

We never did wrong without the conviction that, at 
the time and under the circumstances, the act was need- 
less and avoidable. Could we, one of the sharpest 
pangs of remorse would be extracted, if not all remorse 
effectually quieted and removed. No man was ever 
placed where he could not do right. A virtue that is 
" inevitable," is no virtue. The plea, "I could not help 
it," is always in bar of imputed wrong, and equally 
excluding merit, in action formally right. Of course 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 149 

we would guard against the predisposing tendencies to 
existent wrong, which are found in habits and propen- 
sities formed and resultant of the earlier history of the 
individual or the race, and our friends, in the contro- 
versy, will, we judge, agree with us in this. But if I 
have no power against an existing temptation and 
array of motives, how have I against a previous habit ? 
Such a habit is nothing to me now, in the matter of 
a current responsibility, except as a present influence. 
And if I have no capabilities concerning it, but only to 
freely do its bidding — if I may not at any stage, and 
under any circumstances, arrest and throttle it and 
deliver myself from it, and proclaim the freedom of 
eternal victory over it, from the force of the very ele- 
ments of the intelligence that is in me, and of me as a 
creature of God, and more especially now as aided and 
encouraged by the assurances of the gospel, then indeed 
am I "led as an ox to the slaughter, and like a fool to 
the correction of the stocks." 

But it has been objected " cui bono," — " What is the 
use of claiming the power of contrary choice — it never 
is exercised ? " But are you sure of that ? We believe 
that the power of contrary choice is, and is exercised 
in thousands and thousands of instances every day. In- 
deed, not a sinner turns to God without it. Let a revi 
val of religion sweep through the city and over the 
land, and you have it everywhere. We see not how 
any one gets to Christ without it. He must wake it up, 
and stake his salvation, under God, upon it. He must 
summon it to the work of resistance and counter-action. 
He must contravene the prevalent propensities, and 



150 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

temptations, and habits of a whole life of impenitence 
and alienation from God. He must encounter the 
cherished lusts of a life-time, and go right abreast of 
all he has ever been, to resist all, and against the plead- 
ings, and pretensions, and tyranny of all, and turn 
unto God and live. And in this he needs the power 
of contrary choice, and uses it. So that for all the 
purposes of this discussion this power to the contrary 
is, under God, the life of the world, and is seen where- 
ever a sinner is converted from the error of his way, 
or a soul saved from death. How c«i you break away 
from a dominant propensity, or change a course of 
action, without calling up an element of being like that 
for which we here contend *? 

The objector will not surely take shelter under the 
poor subterfuge that we cannot have two opposite 
choices, or go two ways at once ; for what does this 
amount to, reduced to the last analysis 1 It is just 
equivalent to the insignificant, identical proposition, 
that we do as we do — that personality is a unit, and not 
a duad. A given volition or exercise may be no meas- 
ure of the powers of its author. Powers may lie dor- 
mant, or await the occasion for their use. We should 
be sorry to conclude that one who is only doing wrong 
is exercising all the power he has, or that we ever lose 
the power of right action, whatever, in fact, our con- 
duct may be. 

The poor deceit practiced on the mind of such an 
objector, and which he would doubtless, hold as a con- 
ceded and legitimate postulate, and which has been the 
occasion of more discussions and logomachies since its 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 151 

invention than almost anything else, is that of two sorts 
of necessity — physical and moral — the last always 
retiring, on the analysis of its friends, into a mere cer- 
tainty, only. But how is the merely certain a correlate 
of the possible % Only by begging the question again, 
in view of the theological necessities of the scheme. A 
certainty may be no more allied to a necessity than an 
uncertainty, unless, as before, you restrict the thought to 
the mere inanity, that what will be, will be. But much 
will be that need not be, and that ought not to be, and 
that is under no necessity of being whatever. Shall 
we use a nomenclature, in dealing with abstract truth, 
which obliges us to say that that is necessary which God 
has forbidden, and which he is opposed to, and all good 
agencies in the universe, and the constituent elements 
of our own being % Temptation is one thing, but the 
necessity of compliance quite another. I may be 
greatly tempted, but the greater is the resistance, and 
the use of my power to the contrary, which I can and 
should make ; and if I foolishly comply, the fact would 
be the exji>onent of no necessity thereto. Of course we 
object not to the forms of conventional speech, found in 
or out of the Bible, and for popular use, where great 
temptation or a perpetuated depravity is correlated 
with, or expressed by the words " can," and " cannot ;" 
as, the brethren of Joseph hated him so badly that they 
" could not speak peaceably to him ;" when every one 
knows they could and should. 

The error lies not in accepting this metaphoric lan- 
guage of the Orient and of common life, as implying 
hardened iniquity, or in reference to hereditary propen- 



152 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

sity, or great, overt wickedness, as when it is said that 
such an one is so great a liar that he " cannot" speak the 
truth, and the like phrases that are well enough under- 
stood among men — not this, but in running this phras- 
eology into a universal dogma of Occidental meta- 
physics, and constituting it a battery in the discussions 
of exact truth and science behind which to screen the 
exigencies of a theological system. But the doctrine is 
vital to the theory which it subserves. The aim is to 
secure a Divine government in the moral sphere. And 
to secure this, it is deemed needful to give to God the 
sovereignty of all volitions, that they may thereby be 
as on the whole he would have them to be, and as will 
best promote his great end in creation. And as this can 
be done only in the way of influence " ab extra" to the 
mind, (proper,) there is established from the very de- 
mands of the system this doctrine of necessity, and the 
coalescence of the " is" and the " can be." The error 
lies in bringing in this idea of necessity at all within 
the sphere of the will, and in taking this way of secure- 
ing a Divine moral government. It is inherently vicious 
as a method, and can but subvert the superstructure it 
would raise. What, in the convictions, of any man, 
would be the value of, or what would be that moral 
government or universe which absorbs into the Deity 
all the sovereignty of volitions, and finds in him alone 
all the discretionary movements of mind °? A thing, it 
might be ; more than that it could not be. 

The doctrine of cause is as legitimate and appreciable 
in derived as in underived being. God made man in 
his own image, and after his own likeness. Intelligence 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 153 

is cause "per se" dependent for its being, but with a 
full and unrestricted personality as to its voluntary and 
responsible acts. Where would be the personality of 
God without the sovereignty in himself of his voluntary 
states and acts, and if we might suppose them to be in 
another, and to be caused by any other than himself, 
we could no longer see in him the element of personal 
cause ; nothing would remain but irresponsible effect. 
He must have the control of his forthgoing volitions, 
or he is no person ; he has no discretion in respect to 
what he is, or will be ; he is without individuality or 
accountableness, to himself or to another. Such is all 
intelligence. It must, on the last analysis, be itself 
the umpire in respect to its voluntary states — be itself 
the sovereign, and have the control over them, and say 
what they shall be, and whether or not they shall be. 
Without this you do not get a personality into the in- 
telligence, and abstracting this you destroy it as intelli- 
gence, and convert it into a mere effect, moved by 
causes 'from without, either material or immaterial. 
They shall say what it shall be and do, and not the in- 
telligence itself - ; and theirs should be the responsibility 
of its course. It is no longer a " causa causans" but 
merely a "causa causata." But God deals with derived 
intelligence as if it were a " causa causans" and could 
put forth volitions without his influence therein, or 
with his influence therein, or against his influence 
therein. " Ye stiff necked and rebellious, ye do always 
resist the Holy Ghost." What mean those exhortations, 
and promises, and comminations, and eventual retribu- 
tions, which are everywhere propounded in the Bible, 



154 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

as related to this subject ? What is the doctrine that 
underlies them, or what relevancy in them, if the sover- 
eignity of our voluntary states is not in ourselves, 
but in God"? Does one exhort another to that over 
which he has not the control and jurisdiction, but which 
after all, is with himself? We are aware of indicating 
here but what is well nigh common-place in philosophy, 
that all moral influence is inherently resistible, and that 
individual mind would be without self-respect, if it were 
without self-control. We prize as highly as any the 
work of the Spirit in* the repentance and sanctification 
of men ; but we would not thereby take from and absorb 
away the responsible personality of the soul. Much is 
resistible that will not be resisted. Men will repent 
when they could hold out in sin, as others will continue 
to hold out in sin when they could and should repent ; 
and God knows all the results in both kingdoms of 
his empire, and has indicated them, so far as he has 
thought best, to us. 

All accurate thinkers distinguish between a "sine 
qua non" and a cause. Intelligence acts in the way of 
intelligence. If there were nothing to choose, there 
would be no occasion for choosing. The mind deter- 
mines itself in view of considerations present to it ; 
but these are not the causes of its acts, nor the expo- 
nents of its power. The atmosphere is not the cause 
of breathing, though indispensable to it. The mind 
has laws of thought and principles of action. It dwells 
in a sea of motive influences, variant often and contra- 
dictory, and from all the sources of truth within its 
range ; and it selects its course among them without 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 155 

being commanded by any. It is itself the real and sole 
agent in the matter of volition, from the inherent "nisus" 
of its own interior sphere, with power to accept any 
or refuse any. It can act foolishly or wickedly, or 
wisely, in the same circumstances. All the motives in 
creation may surround and press upon it to do right, 
and yet it may do wrong. It holds a power within, 
and deeper than any external appliances can master. 
We present them, and leave them, and must leave them 
short of the result desired, and let that go to the sov- 
ereign arbitrament of the respondent mind, from its 
own interior sphere, in compliance or rejection, on an 
election and responsibility all its own. Motives do not 
secure choice, or necessitate it. They present its 
grounds, but give not its actuality, and are often 
doomed to bitter disappointment there. The voluntary 
activities of the will are inherently contingent, and so 
we reason in all the intercourse of life. We do in the 
in the pulpit, and in personal appeal. We are not sure 
of results till we get responses. Other principles of 
mind, and the facts of history and experience, help us 
to calculate results, but with much imperfection and 
many failures. The necessitated faculties and well 
known laws of mind show the ordinary range of its vol- 
untary being, but do not necessitate its volition, in any 
given instance. It can will any thing, and that it does 
not, in its voluntary history, abide in the extravagant, 
and ludicrous, and unreasonable, and wrong, is to be 
attributed to other reasons than a limit of power. 

The doctrine of necessity is, then, out of place in 
the sphere of the will, and the position that motives 



156 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

necessitate choice, with no power to the contrary, is 
fairly open to the following objections, which, with these 
preliminary suggestions, may be now more formally 
stated. 

1st. It cannot be proved. From the nature of the case 
it can be but an assumption, and ask the point in de- 
bate. How prove this coalescence of the " is" and the 
"can be," in respect to any given volition, and that it 
is the measure and limit of the powers of the mind, at 
the time, and that it cannot be arrested, or diverted, or 
changed and countermanded at any and every stage 
of it ? We can only say that what is, is — only make 
a true note of history in the premises, without at all 
saying what might or might not be in its place. It 
takes for granted that we must will what we do will, 
and that we have no power against present consent of 
will, but only in its direction and fulfillment. And 
there is, there can be no psychological stand-point from 
which to maintain the position which can make it 
more than a "petitio principii" in behalf of some theo- 
logical necessity supposed to demand it. 

2nd. Its definition of choice is logically incomplete and 
defective. Its claim for choice is freedom in merely one 
direction, whereas the true import of it is freedom to 
either. It is liberty to accept or decline a given object. 
It implies a freedom, and of course a power, to either. 
The object can be received or rejected. The mind is 
sovereign over the issue, and is competent to a decision 
either way. It can act wisely or foolishly in the 
premises — choose life or death — act right or wrong — 
according to the light it has, or against it — obey or 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 157 

disobey — love God or bate him — ■ repent of sin or hold 
out in impenitence — follow Christ or the world. What 
would that choice be which presented no alternative— 
which involved the liability of but one issue, and made 
only that possible in the premises, and necessitated that ? 
The element and the object of choice has now evapor- 
ated out of it, and it settles down into a fatality or a 
farce. The logical demands of the subject involve the 
principle and the power of contrary choice. " Choose 
ye this day whom ye will serve," says the Christian 
preacher ; and does he not know that each one of his 
people, under every presentation of the subject, can at 
any time say, "Yes" or "No," to his plea'? What 
would compliance be worth, but for this; or what 
vitality, or value, in character or destiny '? And hence 

3d. It gives no real election in choice, and no true per- 
sonality to the intelligence. All personality claims discre- 
tion over the issues presented and as presented, It is 
not content with mere willingness of consent; it must 
have co-ordinately the power of refusal. That consent 
must not be, because it could not be withheld. It must 
be with liberty to the contrary, or there is no virtue in 
it, no dignity of manhood, no prerogative of one made 
in the image of God. Carry the opposite view to the 
marts of business, to the subject of religion or morality 
in the common walks of life, or even to the sports of 
childhood, and let the umpire be the common sense and 
sentiments of men, and the dogma would scarcely fail 
of ridicule and contempt. 

The conviction of a practical and competent jurisdic- 
tion over influences brought to bear upon us, to say 



158 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

what we will do and what the act shall be in view of 
them, is every w here, and is everywhere essential to all 
acknowledged responsibility. With its abandonment 
would go all sentiment of personal accountableness, and 
all idea of the characteristic difference between a person 
and a thing. 

4th. It does not meet the demands of consciousness in 
volition or the sentiments of praise and blame which attend 
it. Suppose the volition be a sin. Does it describe the 
conviction of him who committed it, to say that it was 
in any sense necessary and unavoidable? — -that certain 
influences were imposed on me, and I complied, of 
course, without power to the contrary? Something 
approaching this was attempted in behalf of the pri- 
meval sin ; but our first parents broke down with shame in 
giving it. They had courage only to say, "The serpent 
beguiled me, and I did eat ; " " The woman which 
Thou gavest me, gave unto me and I did eat." Not 
that we could not help it, or avoid, and that it was 
" inevitable." The conviction in sinning, is, that it is 
needless as well as wrong : avoidable as well as blame- 
worthy, and that unless it were the one, it would not 
be the other. I am assailed with temptation in the 
streets. Until I comply, I have the power not to, as by 
all admitted. When do I lose it ? Does the consent 
to sin abolish it ? Does the act of compliance abnegate 
the power of resistance, and necessitate my sin ? This 
but confounds cause and effect, and gives an excuse 
beside. It makes the success of crime its apology. 
This would be a wonderful opiate to administer to those 
in sin — a wonderful relief to the pangs of remorse. A 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 159 

child shall say, " I could not help it," and you will 
accept the excuse, while with perfect consistency 
society will inflict a severer punishment on the second 
or third or fiftieth offense, even up to a hardened 
iniquity, than on the first 5 showing indubitably that in 
the convictions of all men there is no relation between 
the indulgence of sin and its necessity. Consent, 
merely, does not, then, exhaust the conscious convic- 
tions of the soul, in respect to its volitions. It is con- 
sent when it might be withheld ; compliance when it 
could have been resistance ; wrong, perhaps, when it 
could and should have been right. Indeed, what is that 
voluntariness that cannot be withheld, that compliance 
which cannot be refused, that acceptance of a position 
or a boon which cannot be resisted 1 ? So that consent 
itself implies a power to the contrary ; and hence, 

5th. Its theory of the intelligence is fundamentally incom- 
petent and unsound. It constitutes the mind a mere effect, 
in nature, moving as it is moved upon, by something 
else. It does not rise to the dignity of the supernatural, 
in its view of mind. The intelligence according to 
this scheme is not cause "per se" — originating its own 
thoughts, — acting from the principles of its own con- 
stituent being, as inherently cause with self-control and 
jurisdiction over its voluntary movements to say what, 
and whether they shall be, — to comply or not comply 
with any motive influences that may be brought to bear 
upon us from any quarter, and to stand erect in the rec- 
titude and dignity of our personal being, whatever the 
currents of adverse influence may be, that are sweeping 
by us ; but only to comply with that which may be 



160 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

deemed the strongest, and be alike at the mercy of any 
and every wave that comes. Mind has no power in 
itself. No element of simple cause inheres in it. It 
may arrest no movement, debate no question, counteract 
no issue, prevent no conclusion. It is only a " causa 
causata" The real cause is elsewhere, — it is "ab extra" 
to the mind, which is mere effect, differing from the 
water-wheel in the feature of consciousness, but not in 
the relations of cause and effect. Just this is the de- 
mand of the scheme. It is an indispensable link in the 
chain, without which the whole would be valueless. 
If the sovereignty of volitions was of the personality, 
and one might at any time say yes or no to any amount 
of temptation that might be on him, who could pre- 
dict its uniform success, according to any preconcerted 
programme that might be laid down, or know but 
that he did in thousands of instances deny its preroga- 
tive, and break in upon its line of things, and thus viti- 
ate this method of moral government, whether human 
or divine % It must then deny all real cause to the 
finite, and with it all actual control over its voluntary 
history or jurisdiction and sovereignty in respect to 
what at any given point it shall be, and demand as 
the content of the mind's experience and its power, 
that it move contentedly and freely in the grooves 
marked by another's hand, in obedience to influences 
ab extra to itself. That this leaves little to the mind 
that is really intelligent in itself or of the nature of a 
bona fide personality, and that it is utterly aside from all 
the dictates of our conscious being, we need not here 
repeat, and pass therefore to the consideration, that, 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 161 

6th. It supplies no valid basis of moral government. 
Such a government always submits a question to the 
respondent under it, and gives him the jurisdiction 
over that question. It acknowledges a discretion on 
his part, — a power at all times to comply or not com- 
ply with the requisitions proposed. It furnishes a test 
— it presents an alternative, and presumes him compe- 
tent to either course. It holds him responsible for the 
right, but capable of the wrong. This is the language 
of all law, of all character and destiny, — the doctrine 
of all promises and exhortations, all rewards and pun- 
ishments, all probation and retribution. It defers to a 
personality, in the subject under it, that is always equal 
to the test given, and to the alternative proposed, to 
avoid the evil and choose the good, — a competency 
that is not compromitted by the actual facts of the 
case, — a competency that sits president among them 
and over them, and abides inherently in the personal 
being of the soul. It is a power to will or not will in 
any given case, — to will as he does or otherwise, — to 
will as he does or as he should, at any and all times, and 
that, too, whether he does so will or not. This element 
of power and sufficiency of soul for all right action, 
and all intelligent responsibilities of *moral government 
lies inherent in the personality and back of all influences 
made to bear upon it. Without it, such a government 
is a mere pageant, and personal being a mere thing. 
Without this you could not have an intelligent account- 
ability. You could never charge that an act was need- 
less and could have been avoided. You could only say 
to the subject under it, " yon could if you would." And 
U 



162 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

he must reply, "inasmuch as I would not, I could not," 
and the act is of necessity, a part of my integral life and 
history — and any government in heaven or on earth 
would break down on this issue and at this point. You 
must divorce the "is" from the "can be" under moral 
government, and account the one to be no necessary 
exponent of the other. A power to do right is a power 
to do wrong. Moral government has its legitimacy 
within that sphere. It furnishes the elements and 
grounds of an intelligent eleetivity, but does not con- 
strain or necessitate it. From the nature of the case it 
could not, and it never will. Its methods are inherently 
resistible, and must be so. It cannot necessitate its 
moral issues. There may be that under it which it does not 
design or want. There may be that which is like rebel- 
lion to the strategy of a state, which is no part of that 
strategy or of its normal working, and which it cannot 
prevent, or dispose of, but in the way of a resultant 
retribution, which takes on the element of physical 
power. Thus there is that under Divine Government, 
which God in no respect sympathizes with or would 
have, and which all the prerogatives of the Infinite 
combine to prohibit and resist, and overcome and cure. 
Probation from its very nature may not see the will of 
God fully met, and there may be no other way of con- 
trolling the spirit of lost men, than that of confining 
their persons in " their own place." Their moral state 
is not such as God would have it, or such as it would 
have been, if he had control of it, and never will be, 
and their condition will be a dernier resort under moral 
government, from the inherent liabilities of it. Such a 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 163 

government must be where God is, and creatures in his 
image, and it is the dignity and glory of creation. But 
this is necessarily of it too, and without which neither 
could virtue, or character, or moral excellency, or in- 
telligent destiny, or heaven, be. All the wealth of 
character and destiny, of morality and religion, of like- 
ness to God and companionship with angels, lies in this 
category of thought. Indeed what would that virtue 
and obedience be, which could not be withheld, but 
which was necessitated and " inevitable.'* Change the 
terms of the problem as you will, and that which takes 
from the intelligence the essential control of its volun- 
tary states, and gives its volitions into the keeping of 
another, destroys it, and blots out all that distinguishes 
moral government in its methods and results from one 
of brute force. The resistibility of moral means is their 
excellency and glory, as well as of all moral action in 
view of them. If they were otherwise they would not 
be moral, nor would action be in view of them. 

7th. The position here controverted is not taken for its 
own sake. We certainly intend no disrespect, and 
think we do no wrong in saying this. The historical 
relations of the question show this, and the effort of its 
friends now, as already intimated, is ulterior, and with 
a view to a theological position. They would find here 
the basis of a Divine government, and of the suprem- 
acy of God, and build on this pedestal the doctrine of 
decrees, and their fulfillment, and the security of the 
plans and purposes of God, and of his great end in 
creation. The line of argument is, that all is by a 
Divine decree and according to a Divine programme, 



164 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

and tending to a Divine end, — that the transpiring of 
each is essential to the grand result which is God's great 
end in his works, and that this necessary fulfillment in 
the moral sphere and its relations to the physical, can- 
not be secured unless motive governs choice and neces- 
sitates it, and that as God has the supreme direction of 
motive influences, he can and does determine all voli- 
tions in accordance with the prescribed plan, and thus 
effectuates and secures his end. Now, without stopping 
to inquire whether it is quite authentic to solve a purely 
psychological problem by a theological formula, and 
taking up the question on its merits, and assuming that 
what is theologically true, is true every way, and every- 
where, which we admit ; are we sure that this is the 
only, or the best, or the true way at all, to constitute a 
Divine moral government ? Would such a government 
be able to redeem itself from the simple pageantry of 
its movement as a Divine fatality, with really but one 
cause, one discretionary impulse and one effective per- 
sonality, and all else reduced to mere effect I But how 
is this ? Does not moral government imply a commerce 
of forces ? — a commingling of different and variant and 
it may be antagonistic personalities and agencies ? Must 
there not be the reciprocities of governor and governed % 
— the mutual concilience of distinct, individual personal- 
ities, each with its own agency and scheme of things, 
and will there not of necessity be as many plans of 
action as there are agents'to enact them ? Is it not so 
among men, as by all confessed, and how does the scale 
of the infinite change the terms of the problem ? God 
"worketh all things according to the counsel of his own 



TO HUMAN ABILIY. 165 

will," but we are not quite so sure that sinners do. At 
least God says they do not. Besides, it is unphilosophi- 
cal to say that one being purposes the purposes of an- 
other. This is not the way of securing from others 
our own ends. We present considerations and induce- 
ments, but we do not invade their agency and constitute 
their purposes. The plans of different agents may coa- 
lesce in the same result, but the plans are distinct and 
peculiar to each, and each is his own plan and not 
another's, and his decrees and purposes are but the 
mental condition of his own acts. We see this every- 
where. It is of the individuality and responsibility of 
all personal intelligence. And we see no need of dis- 
turbing the law of these well known principles and facts, 
in our reference of the subject to its divine relations. 
Indeed, in the light of revealed truth we have them in 
their perfection there. God is in the infinite and in the 
right, and we are intelligent beings. The constituent 
being of man is a plea for the truth and righteousness, 
and course of God. Much that is resistible will not be 
resisted. The resources of the Infinite are with God, 
to bring light out of darkness and order out of con- 
fusion. " Better is the end of a thing than the begin- 
ing." Moral means, though inherently resistible, will 
have increasing success, and under the conduct of the 
Spirit of God will yet gain a glorious and permanent 
triumph over the tempter, death, and sin. Men will 
give heed to that Spirit, and all right agencies and in- 
fluences, when they could hold out against them, and 
their repentance will be a freedom and not a necessity. 
Though none will repent without the Spirit, yet multi- 



166 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

tudes will with. Nations will be born in a day, and 
earth become a type of heaven. " God sees the end 
from the beginning." He sees it. It is intuitional 
with him everywhere and always, and He has intimated 
results to us, for our encouragement, in the use of means. 
Probation will do much in behalf of " God's great end 
in all things," though it will witness much that He 
would not have, and fail of much that He would have. 
He would " have all to be saved," but they will not be. 
His own chosen methods will not be attended with 
universal success. Some, yea, many, alas! too many, 
will resist his will and his Spirit with its array of means 
and influences, and have to be turned over, to the der- 
nier and less acceptable, but necessary retributions of 
moral government. " For he must reign until he hath 
put all his enemies under his feet." A supreme govern- 
or does not in the moral sphere always have all things 
subdued to him. There may be rebellion, and in it 
much that he does not will or wish, and it may bring 
disturbance into the physical relations of his subjects, 
and there may be a process of things, before the issue 
comes. But he will maintain himself against that 
rebellion, and succeed in putting it down, if not in one 
way, then in another. If mercy fails in anything, then 
retribution will take up the work, and the principles of 
his government will be vindicated, — "the righteous 
shine as the stars," and his great end be attained in all 
honor and justice and mercy and truth. Thus God's 
relations to wrong are right, and he is infinitely happy 
in himself and in the prosecution of his great end, 
though all are not saved and though " he has no pleasure 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 167 

in the death of the wicked." And this style of moral 
government is legitimate, and appreciable, and satisfac- 
tory. It is moral government and free from the insuper- 
able objections which must forever attend the view 
above referred to, — and to which we now present the 
still more serious and ultimate disclaimer, that, 

8th. It sanctifies sin. It constitutes sin the Divine 
method of the universe, — as integral in the Divine 
economy, — as a Divine strategy and expedient, intro- 
duced therein with a view to the glory of God and his 
great end in creation. As such he decrees it, its time, 
and manner, and amount, and all the concomitants of 
it, so that there shall be just as much sin as God has 
decreed, without power to the contrary. All sin is a 
Divine method, and according to the Divine programme 
and as such inevitable, and without ability on our part 
of preventing it. We state the case sharply, but truly. 
However stated it comes to this. All this, and much 
more indeed, in the same direction, is the logical 
sequence of the position we controvert and its theo- 
logical adjunct and reason. Any form of thought 
which takes sin into the Divine economy, obliges us to 
give a good reason for it. The doctrine of any strategic, 
propositional relation of God to the introduction of sin, 
commits us for the whole, and we must view all the 
wrong of earth and hell, as comprehensively according 
to the mind and will of God, and must hold him 
responsible for all there is of it, and then the doctrine of 
"no power to the contrary" is legitimate and necessary. 
And thus its friends understand it. Not to go further 
back, Dr. Hopkins of Newport wrote a volume to jus- 



168 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

tify God as the proponent of moral'evilj in which, with 
other language equally decisive, he says, " If God did 
will and choose that sin should exist, (which he main- 
tains,) this necessarily implies, as has been before shown, 
all that energy, exertion and disposal of things that is 
necessary, previous to the existence of sin, in order that 
it may actually take place, and without which it could 
not have existed. For there is an infallible connection 
between the will of God that sin shall exist, and the 
actual existence of it, and this will of God is the cause 
or reason why it has taken place rather than not."* 

Dr. Bellamy, in a more apologetic tone, writes a vol- 
ume on the " wisdom of God in the permission of sin," 
while Dr. Emmons, with his sturdy unflinching logic, 
carries the subject up to its only legitimate conclusion, 
in his "Divine efficiency and scheme." For surely God 
ordains sin, and causes and controls sin in accordance 
therewith, " without power to the contrary," how on 
any other scheme does it take place ? Current theology 
of the Princeton type, pressed in this matter flies to the 
extreme, that " God is above morality," and that " no 
rule reaches him," f while others, better posted, if not 
less unscrupulous, run the whole subject into mystery, 
and frankly acknowledge that the "rationale" of wrong, 
a matter in respect to which we have had and must 
have more practical experience and constant responsibil- 
ity than on any other, is incapable of being under- 
stood. And so it is on the principle here objected to. 
The great Neander so esteemed it, and so it ever must 

* System of Divinity — Decrees. 

fSee Beview of Beecher — Princeton Beview. 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 169 

be esteemed, as an element in the Divine economy. 
The future will be further from appreciating it than the 
past. No man will ever write about it as did Hopkins, 
or with Emmons assume the logical sequences of the 
"efficiency scheme.'' The maturity of the study of moral 
science forbids it. No one on that side will again encoun- 
ter a discussion of the subject on its merits.. With a stand- 
point in the Divine economy, the existence of sin is 
an insoluble mystery, and must ever remain so. The 
studies of eternity will not reconcile us to the doctrine 
that God is the proponent of sin in a scheme of things, 
and as such has decreed it and its accomplishment, and 
then, as an indispensable adjunct, necessitated it in the 
volitions of his creatures. It would be far wiser to 
take a lesson or two from conscience here, as this is 
essentially a moral question, and the solution of it 
practically in and of our convictions every time we sin. 
No one has ever introverted his attention at such a time, 
without the unequivocal conviction that, in this, he is 
outside of a Divine economy, and counter to all Divine 
will and purpose respecting him. He would himself be 
shocked to think that he was then fulfilling a Divine 
decree concerning him, and obeying a Divine arrange- 
ment for its execution, and, moreover, that this was all 
he could do in the premises. If there be a theology 
that cannot be preached, we apprehend that this is it. 
For ourselves we prefer one that can be preached, and 
to take counsel of that of " the feelings" if that of the 
" intellect" must be so lame and ungodlike. We scarcely 
know how to sympathize with those who find so much 
difficulty with the theology of sin. Perhaps we have 



170 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

had more experience of sin than they have. "We would 
hope so for their sake. For ourselves we view it as 
wholly a wrong seed — that it stands out in a plan of its 
own, and a plane of its own, and has about the relation 
to the economy of God, that rebellion has to the strategy 
of a state, and that while intelligence is and must be 
capable of it, and moral government inherently liable 
to it, as its abuse and perversion, it is no way of God, 
that it is in no sense according to the will of God, or 
has his consent or purpose in its behalf, or that it should 
be, or that we should commit it, but that, on the con- 
trary, " His will is our sanctification," and that God 
sustains none but antagonistical relations to sin and 
wrong in every respect, and that he is taking the best 
methods of the Infinite to subdue and overcome it and 
instruct the universe out of it as a real dualism in finite 
cause. We have here the first truths of reason as well 
as the gist and spirit of Revelation and we get a 
theology that can be preached, that the conscience en- 
dorses, and that does not outrage its convictions of 
what must be the being, and perfections, and work, and 
way of God. Whatever else is true, we think this is, 
and that, based on the principles of truth, it will be 
found to justify itself in the light of all well balanced 
investigation that may be made respecting it in the 
future, while it is free from the insuperable objections 
of the scheme which makes God the proponent of wrong, 
and constitutes sin an integral element in the Divine 
economy of the universe. 

Finally. The view we oppose is virtually surrendered in 
the explanations of its friends concerning it. Its "necessity" 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 171 

is resolved into a mere "certainty," but how the one 
becomes a correlate or synonym of the other is not so 
well shown, and though this seems to be an advance 
in the jight direction, yet its meaning is not fully 
obvious. It can not be intended to refer to an existent 
volition and reduce itself to the insignificant proposition 
that what is, is. It is prospective in its aim, and would 
make sure the future of our voluntary history and de- 
scribe its law, and constitute that law, in the doctrine 
of motive influences on the will. And then to make 
that doctrine efficacious for its theological intent, that 
influence must be a Divine method, in the interest of 
and to insure a Divine government, and the carrying 
out of a Divine programme, in our voluntary history, 
and to give a Divine control in it as being that which 
God has ordained, and comprehensively, would have. 
This was the sense and the aim of the distinguished 
men already quoted, and it is necessary to the validity 
of the scheme. We regret to say that it was an integral 
element in the great work of " Edwards on the Will." 
But it forgets that the mind is a " causa causans" — that 
it has in itself a real personality, and control of its 
voluntary states — that it is a power in itself and capa- 
ble of resisting any force of motives thus imposed, and 
of course, of breaking up any scheme of things thus 
devised — that Propensity is no authorized law of choice, 
and that no constraint of wrong can apologize for it, or 
place us beyond the power and obligation of right 
action. Derived intelligence is made in the image of 
its author, capable of originating its voluntary states, 
on a plan of movement and progress which is its own 



172 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

and not another's. Self-origination of plan and style 
and acts of voluntary movement is essential to all per- 
sonality. God has his plan, and angels and devils theirs, 
and men theirs, but we shall be slow to conclude that 
the converse of this is true, and that the plan of each 
is that of all, and that the plans of all the apostate 
spirits of earth and hell are, also, that of God for 
them. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor 
your ways my ways," saith the Lord. But if only 
a certain futurition of volition is intended by the neces- 
sity scheme, then what is to be understood by that ? 
Of the future we know very little, and with all the 
power of forecast, that the experience of the ages or 
our own has given, we are often sadly disappointed in 
respect to the conduct and course of men. God knows 
all, always from the intuitions of his own infinite mind, 
and is competent from the resources and prerogatives 
of his own infinite being to bring out, in mercy and in 
judgment, a final result, glorious to himself and to the 
principles of all righteousness, in which his kingdom is 
founded. 

But why not go a step further, and acknowledge that 
derived intelligence is a power in its sphere in the sense 
that its author is,— that it is self-acting from the 
resources of its own interior and essential being, in 
view of the elements and grounds of choice, within its 
reach, competent always for right action, and intelli- 
gently responsible for its course, — self-sustained and 
approved in all right action, and self-convicted and self- 
humiliated for all sin, as that which is needless and un- 
necessary as well as hurtful and wrong, — that the 



TO HUMAN ABILITY. 173 

method and government of God is a perfect righteous- 
ness, and his influence and will and purpose for a perfect 
rectitude, in those " created in his image," and his end, 
a holy, happy universe in his love and likeness — that 
ail other and else than this in the moral sphere is not 
of him — that he is filling the universe with motives 
and incentives to love and obey him, and furnishing 
none to the contrary, and no excuse for sin, and 
that he is taking the best methods to reduce and bring 
all into subjection, i-n mercy and judgment and will, 
"until all his enemies be put under his feet," — the 
" righteous shine as stars in firmament," and " God be 
all in all." Doing this, we should not feel much dis- 
posed, as we " certainly" should be under no " necessity' 9 
to complain. But our limits are up and here we close, 
commending this whole subject to the careful study 
of those who would seize on the true lineaments of 
the Divine government, and of the intelligent account- 
ability of man. • 



174 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTER XV. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO THE PREVENTION 

OF SIN. 

[«] Where God is, and created intelligence, there, is 
moral government. 

[b~\ Moral government has its nature, and capabilities. 
It is a government of law— by motives — truth— reason 
and right — and by elective, resistible means. It implies 
a possible alternative in action. It may be resisted, 
maligned, — abused,— its intents be thwarted and its 
penalty incurred. It involves the liability of right or 
wrong action under it — obedience or disobedience, — 
conduct/character, destiny, — good or ill desert, — rewards 
and punishments. 

Its results are a contingency, of which one factor is 
free-will. That may be which it [moral government] 
does not will or want, and which it would not have, and 
against which all its instructions, guards and methods, 
are set and its provisions made. 

[c] This nature of moral government is its excellency 
and glory. In this lies the principle of all morality and 



TO THE PKEVENTION OP SIN. 375 

virtue, of all right and wrong in conduct and character 
— of all goodness, justice, righteousness, — praise and 
blame, — all appreciation of character and conduct, — all 
estimate of the perfections and worthiness of God, or 
of his creatures, — all spiritual advancement, sympathy 
and communion, and all the peculiar and transcendent 
excellencies and glories of a moral system. 

[d ] All intelligence has its behoofs and prerogatives, 
without which it would not be intelligence, and this as 
properly in derived, created beings, as in the underived 
and uncreated Jehovah. It is in the likeness and image 
of God in these respects. It has personality — free-will 
— a personal discretion and jurisdiction over its volun- 
tary states and acts and control in them. 

This is the logical and conscious doctrine of choice, 
and is essential to our intelligent responsibility. See 
chapter xiv. 

[e] Sin, in wrong choice, is an inherent liability in a 
moral system. This could not but so be. It is possible 
from the very terms of the system. This is an elective 
system. A power to do right is a power to do wrong. 
That which can be, may actually be, and history shows 
that it actually has been, and is. It is not necessary 
but contingent, in a moral system. It may come through 
ignorance and inexperience, foreign temptation, heed- 
lessness, forgetfulness, disregard of divine admonition. 
A "fac simile," we have in every day's transgression. 

[/] Sin will first occur through the wrong or forbid- 
den use of constitutionally right propensities, powers, 
or elements of intelligent being. It is an apostaey. It 
is an abnormal state of the soul, and implies a falling 



176 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

away from the right and normal state of the soul. Sin 
can only thus be at first. Fact shows that it did thus 
occur. 

[g] Sin when once broken out, will follow the law of 
habit and propensity, and strengthen by indulgence. 
It may perpetuate a sinful moral nature, and beget in a 
race a hereditary proclivity to wrong. This is what 
is sometimes termed " original sin," or sinful nature. 
It is a proclivity to wrong in the habits of the race, 
traceable to the first and test transgression. It is like 
an entailed propensity to drunkenness or any vice. It 
is not in itself sin, but a tendency to it, — an inclination 
— a bias — a perpetuated habit or propensity, whose indul- 
gence is sin, — whose rebuke and discomfiture is praise- 
worthy. This is the law of all intellectual and volun- 
tary existence. 

[K] Moral government can not say that sin will not 
occur. Its very nature supposes the liability of sin. 
There is no way of stating the case that does not in- 
volve this, so that the question " why is not all sin pre- 
vented," is simply and purely irrelevant. Sin can be — 
law can be violated, — a discretion must lie with the sub- 
ject, and be vested in him, whether to obey or disobey, 
in order to any responsible or praiseworthy issue, as 
well as from the inherent electivity of the subject mat- 
ter. God may be wholly with his law, and place all 
the guards of moral government against transgression, 
and yet it may occur : — and that it can occur, is proved 
by the fact that it has occurred. 

[Y] The character of God is not implicated in the 
breaking out of sin. He does all for its prevention, 



TO THE PREVENTION OF SIN 177 

and for the legitimate ongoing of the moral universe in 
righteousness, that moral government implies and admits 
of. Sin is antitheistic in its inception, and altogether 
against the will, and without the permission of God. 
As it could be, so it is, the prerogatives and prohibition 
of God to the contrary notwithstanding. It is no way 
theistic in its origin, but the Divine relations are all an- 
tagonistic to it. 

[y] The origin and existence of sin are fully ac- 
counted for in the doctrine of personal cause, existing 
in intelligent beings. Man can disobey God, and the 
resources of moral government may not always pre- 
vent it. 

The provisions of moral government may be exhaust- 
ed in behalf of the right, and yet wrong may occur. It 
is of the sovereignty of free-will and necessarily con- 
tingent in moral government. 

Sin is not to be resolved into "the secret will of God." 
It comes through no want of faithfulness in Him to the 
cause of virtue and all righteousness. It is simply the 
transgression of his whole law, and disobedience to his 
whole mind and will. The Almighty has not an attri- 
bute that allows it. 

[&] Moral government has more resources for the 
cure and discomfiture and putting down of sin, than 
for its utter prevention at first. " The way of transgres- 
sors is hard." Sin is a critic on itself. It grates against 
conscience and writes a bitter history. The moral his- 
tory of the world accumulates reason against it a and 
adds force to all virtue and righteousness. Sin occurs 

at first through ignorance, misconception, inexperience, 
12 



178 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

mistaken views, — foreign temptation (in man) and ap- 
peal to the lower constitutional susceptibilities. It is 
out of harmony with the ideas and first truths of the 
reason, and has the endorsement of no intelligent ele- 
ment of mind. There is no good reason for it, and no 
being in the universe that really justifies it, and that is 
not ashamed of it. Truth and right accumulate in 
strength and in grounds of acceptance with the pro- 
gress of ideas, and are in harmony with the sufficiency 
of God. An argument for the position that the Gos- 
pel will universally prevail, lies in the fact that it is true. 
Mind and truth are correlates. Sin shrinks from inves- 
tigation — error has no reliable basis — all sciences favor 
the truth — this is seen in human history — all progress 
tends towards Christian civilization. The millennium 
of prophecy is the only reasonable end of the earth's 
history. 

[ ?•] Sin would not be likely to occur, except in the 
outset of a moral economy. Mature mind would be 
too wise and good for it. It is the offspring of mis- 
take, inexperience, indiscretion, and heedlessness at 
first. See Gen. in : 6. Experience in virtue and good- 
ness will give confirmation in all rectitude. As no good 
reason exists for sin, so intelligent beings will observe 
this, and get beyond actual liability to a first apostacy 
from right. So elect angels — so the Church triumphant 
in heaven. Confirmation in holiness to those that have 
not sinned, is as much a law of mind as an appointment 
of God. We may hope that the universe is largely 
peopled with intelligent beings who have passed beyond 
the actual liability of sin and apostacy from God. 






TO THE PREVENTION OF SIN. 179 

[m] Sin is no co-ordinate of a Divine moral system 
It is a possible alternative, as rebellion is in the state, 
or disobedience in the family, but is no part of the sys- 
tem. That is perfect of itself in its legitimate ongoing, 
and sin is but the abuse of it, — its rupture and bane, 
and the forfeiture of its benefits. Sin is a malfeasance 
— an aberration of mind, guarded against, and sought 
to be prevented, by moral government. 

[ri] Sin is no matter of Divine arrangement or de- 
cree, and is not thus conditionated. God intentionally 
knows all things, and knows them in the relations in 
which they exist and as they exist. He purposes what 
he wants and would have, or rather what he does. Eph., 
i: ii. His purposes have respect to sin, as those of any 
good being may, and as may be needful to antagonism 
with it, and to bring good out of it. His purposes 
and acts are all in conflict with sin, and for its preven- 
tion, discouragement and overthrow. Sin is no strategy 
of the Deity. It could not be, for three reasons — it is 
logically impossible, as contrary to his nature, — to his 
wilt, — and would compromit his character. He could 
not deny himself — he would have no heart in it, and 
he must respect his own good name. 

[o] God will bring good out of evil by showing 
where he is — by manifesting the contrasts of right and 
wrong, and bringing honor on all righteousness, and 
dishonor on all wrong — by making the wrath of man 
to praise him, — turning their wicked designs to fulfill- 
ing some good and wise purpose — taking advantage of 
their wrong to accomplish his good ends — as in the 
death of Christ. 



180 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

[p ] The conditions of this. Sin must not be a Di- 
vine method, and God must enter into no propositional 
relation to an economy of sin and wrong. Sin as a 
method must not have a theistic origin, or be in any sense 
a Divine expedient. It must in no sense compromise 
the unity, holiness, or goodness of God, by being of his 
arrangement or in any sense according to his will. 
There must be an out and out antagonism between God 
and a system of wrong. His relation to it must be 
wholly that of prevention, remedy or punishment. 

[q] As sin is a liability, when it occurs it may be 
treated providentially and judicially for the good of the 
universe : — for instruction — warning — mercy — retribu- 
tion. Its unwitting agency may effectuate a Divine 
purpose and God may interlock with it, in any way 
that any good being may and will in his sphere, for and 
in behalf of his own wise and benevolent purposes. 
He may yield his Son to its machinations, and make 
his death the life of the world. He may antagonize 
with sin as " bona fide" the method of another, and 
against his own will, in any and all ways within the 
sphere of goodness and righteousness, and he may 
serve himself out of it, at his own discretion, in any 
way possible, in furtherance of his own wise ends. 

[r] Divine moral government will eventually succeed 
against sin, by the use of physical power. Retribution, 
in the end enters into it, and becomes an integral part 
of it. Probation, its incipient stage, uses moral means 
mostly and subsides into retribution, which puts down 
all authority and power, but of God. 

[s_ Moral government in its actual sway and com- 



TO THE PREVENTION OF SIN. 181 

mand, may never be complete and universal over all 
free-will. Retribution even, may not conquer the heart. 
Lost spirits in hell will not in temper be subdued to 
God. But retribution affects the condition, — it acts 
materially or physically, so to speak. It is a dernier 
resort, to put away, where they will do least harm and 
receive merited punishment, those that are not in spirit 
recovered under probation. Devils and damned spirits 
will forever resist and be opposed to God and unsub- 
dued in will. 

[ t ] It is to be hoped that the number of the lost will 
in the end be few comparatively to that of the saved. 

\u] God is ever infinitely happy, notwithstanding the 
existence of sin, because his preventive, remedial, and 
punitive relations, and all his relations to it, are right 
and he does all the case admits of to remedy, and to 
bring good out of it. 



182 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTER XVI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO PERSONAL RECOV- 
ERY FROM SIN. 

[a] It recognizes the element and doctrine of free- 
will, and the electivity of mind. It in this relation 
abides in the supernatural. [5] It claims the basis of 
an intelligent, personal responsibility, [c] It supplies 
the requisites of right choice, and fills the universe with 
reasons for it, and motives to it. 

[d~] It makes its appeal to the reason, the conscience, 
and every susceptibility of the soul, [e] It operates by 
providence, probation, and retribution. [/] It claims 
in man the ability for right action, and that the impedi- 
ments in the way of it are such as he is legitimately 
required and bound to overcome. [g\ It makes impeni- 
tence appreciably sinful and intelligently remediable and 
preventable, and penitence for sin a reasonable com- 
mand and duty. \h\ By describing the harmony of 
reason and religion, it shows the impediments to piety 
to be in the lower, earthly, apostate nature, — the 
" law in the members," — and therefore no way of God, 



TO PERSONAL RECOVERY FROM SIN. 183 

but the fruit of rebellion against him. [z] It presents 
the inherent oppositeness of the call to repentance. 
[k] It shows sin and sinning to be exceeding sinful. 

[/] It leaves impenitence without excuse. It moral 
means are resistible, so much the more are they obliga- 
tory. 



184 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINES. 

I. DEPRAVITY AND NATURAL STATE. 

[a] The apostacy of Adam took effect in two ways : 
—it diverted the race from the track of obedience, and 
it vacated the economy of legal obedience, as the way 
of eternal life under which man at first was placed. 

\p\ It rendered acceptance and communion with God 
impossible, and salvation too, on grounds of law strictly 
and of personal obedience, (c) It induced a course and 
habit of disobedience in the race, degenerating into a 
propensity to sin in departing from God, and the setting 
up of self, attended with that discouragement in return- 
ing to God, which the entrance of sin occasioned. 
(d) The natural state of man, then, since the fall, is 
that of rupture and alienation and controversy with 
God ; of broken covenant and obligation and of effort 
for self-justification, self-help, and self-reliance. It is 
self-love and self-respect carried over into selfishness, 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 185 

and disrespect of God, of the claims of his law and 
authority, and of all righteousness and truth. It is self- 
ism, instead of piety and devotion to God. It is deprav- 
ity — a falling off from God to idols in form or spirit, 
and a yielding up ourselves to ways of disobedience to 
him. (<?) Depravity has its primary seat in the will. It 
took its rise in a wrong voluntary state or act, and per- 
petuates itself in the habit of disobedience. It follows 
the law of habit — its indulgence begets propensity — 
wrong proclivities are formed, and hereditary degeneracy 
ensues. See this law of being in the rise and peculiar- 
ities of clans and nations, — in the influence of par- 
ticular vices. (/') The constituent elements of our be- 
ing abide in us noth withstanding the fall. A man is a 
man yet, though apostate from God. He has reason, 
conscience, and free, responsible will. These faculties 
may be clouded and perverted by sin, but they yet 
exist, and give their testimony for God and the right. 
{g) A proclivity to sin or any given course of action, 
may be perpetuated, and inherited. It falls into the 
general law and doctrine of kindred and race. It 
obtains everywhere in nature, and in all being. We 
beget in our own likeness and after our kind. A pro- 
clivity to good would not be objected to, a proclivity 
to evil is the fruit of disobedience, and not a Divine 
responsibility. 

\K\ Responsibility, on strict analysis, is personal and 
untransferable. The indulgence of a sinful or wrong 
bias, or propensity, or proclivity to evil, whether heredi- 
tary or otherwise, is sinful and consciously so, and the 
obligation to confront and overcome it perfect and 



186 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

acknowledge, and compliance with the obligations is 
praiseworthy, and an excellence in the sight of man and 
God. 

[i] Proclivity to sin, as related to personal responsi- 
bility, is a temptation to sin ; it is the indulgence of it 
that is sin, and the resistance of it that is commanded, 
and a duty, and an excellency and praiseworthiness. 
" If original sin" technically, be this proclivity, it has 
this reference and takes this solution, and does not im- 
pinge on the general law of personal responsibility. 

[,/ J " Native depravity," as a state, is the being born 
in such a world as this, with such proclivities to wrong 
as are imposed on any given generation, by those 
preceding it, and especially by our first parent Adam, in 
the outbreak of sin. 

[&] Depravity, as a life and a responsibility, is the 
personal indulgence of such proclivities, and a living 
in them, and apostate from God, and unrecovered from 
the reigning influence of sin and of these propensities 
which incite to it. 

[I] "Total, or entire depravity," such as the Bible 
and history describe the native state of fallen man to 
be now, is the being wholly self-given up to the lead 
and sway of these proclivities, and to a life alienated 
from God, and to a state of impenitence in sin, a state 
destitute of holiness and love to God. All are not to 
the same degree depraved, but all are alike in this, that 
in their native, unregenerate state, they have not love 
to God, and do not from love to him obey his will. 

[rri] Moral government regards them as created with 
requisite powers, and sufficient means for all righteous- 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 187 

ness, except through their own fault or the fault of the 
race but as wholly deficient in the life of piety and obe- 
dience, to which all true religion implies and demands. 

II. REGENERATION. 

I a] This may be regarded either as a state or as an 
act or work done, and moral government ascertains its 
nature and relations in both respects. In the first, it is 
regarded more in its issue and results ; and in its act, 
more in its essence and cause. A state of regeneration 
is the state, habit, or mode of life into which the re- 
generating act introduces us. It is the new life, and 
the new state of pardon, reconciliation, and acceptance 
with God, and of submission, peace and love on our 
part. The regenerating act or work is that which is 
done in the soul in passing it out of the state of unrecon- 
ciliation, and disobedience and condemnation, into that 
of reconciliation, forgiveness, and favor. 

[h] This act or work has its divine, and its human 
side and relations. It is God working in us, or we 
acting under divine influence, suggestions, and efficiency. 
God works in us to will and to do, and we thus willing 
and doing, under those effectual divine influences repent 
of sin, — become penitent for the past, and turn believ- 
ingly and lovingly to God, — yielding up the contro- 
versy and submitting to him on the terms of the Gos- 
pel. It is a combined movement of divine influence 
for our right action and of our compliance with it, in 
repenting, believing, loving, or whatever grace is first 
in the circumstances of the case, and the first in eon- 
version, and we pass into a regenerated state. We are 



188 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

not regenerated before we are penitent, but when and 
as soon as we are penitent. It is our thus becoming 
penitent that makes it true of us that we are new crea- 
tures in Christ. We do not repent because we are re- 
generated, but because of the effectual working of the 
spirit of God, through the truth, convincing us of sin, 
and inducing penitence for it, and which when wrought 
in and exercised by us, is the ceasing of the impenitent, 
unconverted state, and the passing into the renewed, or 
converted state. 

[e] The philosophy of conversion or regeneration, is 
the same as that of any other change in the habituated, 
voluntary state of man. It is a change of action in 
view of good reasons for it, made effectual by the 
Divine spirit. It is a reasonable change in view of 
good reasons for it, apprehended, and in the view of the 
mind under the lead of the spirit. Other changes in 
the voluntary state of the soul occur without this super- 
added agency ; but such is our proneness to sin, such 
the strength and constancy of our sinful habits and 
propensities, that we never should truly break away 
from them, and truly repent and turn to God, without 
special help from him, in sending the Spirit to work in 
us to this end. All is according to the laws of mind, 
and to the doctrine of any and all change in the state 
of the will, or the voluntary change of mind ; but special 
means and help thereto are granted, in regeneration 
and recovery from sin. 

[d] In regeneration no new power [or faculty] is 
communicated to the soul, but a new direction is given 
to those inherent in it. Its faculties are exercised in a 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTEINES. 189 

different way, under conviction of sin, we yield and re- 
pent, whereas before we resisted and held out in impen- 
itence; and as we thus repent and submit, it becomes 
true of us that we are penitent, converted persons, re- 
newed in the spirit of our minds. 

[e] In regeneration we are conscious of no influence 
and no change but in view of the truth, and in accord- 
ance with it, and such as the truth is calculated and de- 
signed to work. It is right voluntary action, in view 
of the truth, through the Spirit. 

[/] In regeneration, a new habit, inclination, or pro- 
pensity, or proclivity to right action is commenced, 
which gradually strengthens in the progress of the soul 
in that direction, so that that action becomes more easy 
and habitual as we advance in the knowledge of the 
truth and in obedience to it, being helped of God. 

[g\ Regeneration is not a miracle. It is but giving 
" the law in the mind" the ascendancy over "the law in 
the members," and recovering a man to legitimate right 
action and life, through instrumentalities and by meth- 
ods which accord with the laws of mind and the princi- 
ples of all intelligence. 

\K\ It is better to regard this change from nature to 
grace as every way an intelligent one, and an account- 
able process of mind, than to clothe it in mystery, as a 
dark and unappreciable matter, bearing no relation to the 
laws of mind and truth, and concerning which no intel- 
ligent account can be given. John in. : 8-10. The 
Savior uttered these words, not to shroud the subject in 
mystery, but to explain it, and to rebuke Nicodemus for 
not understanding it better ; and if it could be put 



190 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

among " earthly things" then, which neophites should 
understand, what light ought the progress of the ages 
to have thrown upon it since. 

[z] Moral government demands that this change, 
described as regeneration, be in the voluntary and re- 
sponsible element of our being — a change of spirit, 
aim and action, and of relations to law and duty, undel 
the guide of reason and conscience, and not in any 
constituent faculty of mind. 

[_j ] It is a change fitly required of us, and the com- 
mand "make you a new heart," is just and proper. 

[IS] The agency of God, in our conversion is to be 
regarded as a needful, and gracious help thereto, but 
not in abatement of our responsibility therein. 

III. JUSTIFICATION. 

[a] Moral government decides that sin can not be 
forgiven, or the sinner accepted, without an atonement. 

[b] It decides that the sinner can not be justified on 
the ground of personal merit and righteousness. The 
doctrine of the Days-man is in the woof of moral gov- 
ernment, if rescue for the sinner is attempted. 

[c] It is also in the conscience. No man can ever be 
intelligently reconciled to himself for a single sin, on 
grounds of law. One wrong is forever fatal to the soul. 
Conscience proclaims any sin an eternal wrong, and 
forbids reconciliation to it. 

[d] The subjective and the objective of moral gov- 
ernment agree in this, and proclaim the doctrine of a 
vicarious atonement in order to the forgiveness of sin. 

[e] A sense of demerit, and desert of punishment, is 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 191 

inevitable on the commission of sin. It is universal. 
Thus law has its counterpart in our own bosoms ; a law 
is but the outward and overt expression of our own 
minds in the premises. 

[/] The Christian doctrine of justification in its 
Divine relations, is that of God's forgiveness of sins ; 
and, on its human side, that of our being forgiven and 
and accepted with God. It is a gracious and sovereign 
act of God, in which he freely pardons our sins, accepts 
us into his favor, as his children, absolved from the 
legal penalties of our transgressions and delivered from 
condemnation, and restored to a state of reconciliation 
and peace with him. This act does not ignore the facts 
in the case, but forgives and accepts, — restores and 
adopts, and accounts us as children and heirs, notwith- 
standing those facts, and though in the full knowledge 
of them. 

[#] The locality of justification among Christian 
doctrines, is next in order to repentance or acceptance 
of the terms of mercy. We could not be justified 
while impenitent, and it is promised as soon as its con- 
ditions are met, and is in order then. It is so in the 
order of nature and reason, as well as of the Bible. 
When one is penitent for his sins and acknowledges 
them, and submits to rightful authority, then is the 
place for the exercise of forgiveness and for his deliver- 
ance from condemnation. This is all the sinner can do, 
to get restored, and just that which the nature of the 
case requires of him, and just what he is constitution- 
ally empowered to do. 

[h] The meritorious ground of justification to the 



192 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

sinner, is the mediation of the Son of God. His equal 
" status" with the Father enables him to undertake this 
work. As God the Son, he could humble himself with- 
out disparagement to first principles of law and right, 
and take upon him our nature, and die in our stead. 
The substituted sufferings of Christ unto death, are 
that in which the atonement primarily consists. The 
acknowledgement and vindication of the claims of right- 
eous law, which are seen in his making his soul an offer- 
ing for sin, and dying " the just for the unjust," that 
we might be made the righteousness of God in him. 
This self-surrender and self-sacrifice, for the sake of an- 
other, honors moral government, and exhibits God as 
just, though he justifies the ungodly on the terms of the 
Gospel. It is the doctrine of commerce — of common 
life — and of the human mind. 

p] Personal merit in the sinner as the ground of jus- 
tification, is excluded from the fact and the demerit of 
sin, and all release from the penalties of law must be by 
the Days-man, and the method of expiation. 

\_j ] Moral government decides that rescue and grace 
must be by substituted suffering and atonement. It 
can accept nothing less than an equivalent to the legal 
penalty of transgression. 

\Jc] Atonement need not be in kind or duration the 
same with the penalty incurred by sin, but it stands 
in its place and before the universe a full moral equiva- 
lent, so that all right conclusions of mind therefrom 
will defer to the claims of law, and justify the method 
of grace. 

[(J Atonement may be more than the bare equivalent 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 19S 

for the penalties of law. It may not only justify par- 
don, but honor it, and open the way to all the glory and 
blessedness of a kingdom of grace. And hence, 

[w] Atonement opens the way for all that is peculiar, 
and excellent and enriching and desirable in an economy 
of grace. And hence, 

[m] The songs of angels, and of the redeemed of 
earth, "to him who died for us and hath redeemed us 
to God." " To Him be glory," &c. 

IV. SANCTIFICATION. 

[a] This in its process is regeneration continued, and 
perfected in the full and complete subjection and obedi- 
ence of the soul in spirituality and holiness and the 
love of God. The process on both the Divine and 
human sjde is identical, though its commencement is 
technically and fitly termed a regeneration or spiritual 
renewal and recovery to God, and its progress a sancti- 
fication of the whole man, gradually and eventually, by 
the word and Spirit of God, working together in us and 
with us, in bringing every thought into obedience and 
love. 

[b~\ Sanctification is the transformation of the whole 
soul into the love and likeness of Christ. It is right 
action in the recovered sinner in the circumstances in 
which he is placed, under the influence of truth and of 
the Spirit, and making progress therein, onward to per- 
fect manhood in Christ. It consists in progressively 
getting the victory over sin in all its forms, and in being 
at length brought into the perfect likeness of God. 

[c] Sanctification is a process of activity in us and by 
13 



194: MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

us, intelligently prosecuted under the lead of the truth 
and Spirit of God. We are conscious only of acting 
in the matter under the influence, and in view of the 
truth, but the Spirit of God gives it efficacy, and secures 
success to the work, without which it would fail and 
come short of accomplishment. This is a revealed 
doctrine, — a needed gracious economy, and in its work- 
ing every way in accordance with the laws of mind. 
We have analogies of it on every hand. We ever act 
in the midst of influences from those about us — all in- 
telligences act more less upon us, — all agencies from 
without are or may be associated with our voluntary 
being and conduct, and character and destiny. 

[d] Sanctification is a self-confirming process. It 
obeys the law of habit, and the general laws of mind, 
by which accustomed action becomes easier. , We gain 
habits of well doing and are fortified against temptation. 
We gain instruction, and see more and more the wrong 
and folly of sin. 

[e] Sanctification is every way a rational and intelli- 
gent process. It is like the dawn and progress of the 
morning. Under the lead of the Spirit reasons for 
goodness of heart and life accumulate ; the sphere of 
divine knowledge enlarges, as the approval of con- 
science and the blessedness of piety become sweet and 
attractive, and the ways of God more desirable. 

The highest truth, — the largest thought, and the 
truest culture are found in the knowledge of God and 
the studies of religion. 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 195 

V. PERSEVERANCE OF SAINTS. 

(a) This doctrine asserts that all who truly repent 
and are born from above, will persevere unto life ever- 
lasting. 

(b) This would seem to be the only reasonable result 
from the process of sanctification. 

(c) It is opposed by the " law in the members," and 
all the impediments from this world — the lusts of the 
eye — of the flesh — and the pride of life. 

(d) It is nevertheless graciously promised and guaran- 
teed in the word of God. 

(e) It is effected through the agency of the provi- 
dence, word, and Spirit of God on our voluntary nature, 
and its correspondent action to this end. 

(f) There is a momentum force gained at length 
that expedites this result. " How can ye that are dead 
to sin, live any longer therein f 

( g) There are arguments for it in all reason and truth, 
and all increasing knowledge of God, and of the grounds 
of obedience and love. 

(Jc) Confirmation and perpetuity in a given course of 
action become the law of mind eventually. There is 
probation and retribution, or reward, in the very nature 
of mind. It is the subjective correlate of moral gov- 
ernment. In the bad, conscience at first an advisory 
monitor, becomes, when long resisted, a scorpion sting 
of remorse. The Rubicon may be passed in moral 
character, and conviction, in the wrong-doer, be changed 
into despondent self-reproach, self-infliction, and self- 
surrender to ruin and woe. The converse of this is true 



196 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

in the good. One passes over eventually by the laws of 
the intelligence from probation to its results. Apostacy, 
if it ever occurs in the history of an individual or a 
race, will occur early and in their unripe experience, 
Holy angels are past its actual liability. So are the re- 
deemed of earth, in heaven. They know too much, — 
have had too much experience — and are too good, to 
act so unwisely and so wickedly as to sin against God. 

(i) Multitudes of worlds may have attained already 
this experience and discipline in virtue and truth. Hence 

(j ) Confirmation in holiness and rectitude is a natural 
result under moral government and in a morol system, 
as well as the appointment of God. There is consent 
in the constitution of mind, and the overt dispensations 
and awards of this government, and as this system in- 
herently has probation and retribution in it, so has the 
human mind. 

(k) The confirmation, perpetuity and growing perfec- 
tion and blessedness of the heavenly state, is the reason- 
able and innate result of moral government under God, 
no less than it is his gracious, positive appointment ; 
and those who fail of it must be false to their own be- 
ing, to the provisions of moral government, and to 
God. 

VI. REPROBATION. 

{a) Moral government essentially has probation and 
retribution — character voluntarily formed, and the re- 
sults of it in destiny. A moral system implies and 
necessarily involves this. There must be personal con- 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 197 

duct and rewards and punishmemts, according to char- 
acter and desert. 

(b) This too, as elsewhere stated, is subjectively the 
doctrine of conscience. 

(c) It is also a law of mind that probation changes to, 
and issues in, retribution — opportunity claims its re- 
sponse and its award. 

(d) Persistence in wrong eventually hedges up effec- 
tually the way of return, character becomes stereotyped, 
and self-reprobation ensues. 

(e) Reprobation, as a divine act, is in conformity 
with these inherent and essential principles of moral 
government, and only the declarative and needful event- 
uation of them, in the authoritative superintendence and 
government of God. 

(/) Moral government declares the condition of the 
lost to be ir-remediable and endless. 

(g) It is with God an unwelcome an unavoidable 
issue and resort: — moral government has no other al- 
ternative. 

(h) Good faith demands this of God. 

VII. FINAL STATE OF THE LOST. 

(a) It is that of rebellion, and disobedience and un- 
reconciliation of heart. 

[b] It is that of confirmed rebellion. The heart is 
not only hardened and the habits and propensities to 
sin confirmed, but the moral susceptibilities have passed 
over into that second stage, where conviction only 
maddens, and excites despondency and remorse — where 
light only reproves and reproaches, and all motives to 



If 8 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

goodness bring up but a sense of loss and ruin, and the 
wretched experience, the " harvest is past, the summer 
is ended, and I am not saved." 

[c] It is that of physical control over and confine- 
ment in the lost world. The physical condition in hell 
is assigned of God. It is as he is ruler and judge. So 
from the claims of law, and the demand of the well- 
being of the good and holy. 

[d] It is a state of punishment for rebellion and per- 
sistence in it. 

[e] It is a state of increasing depravity and moral 
degradation and departure from God. 

[/] It is a state of increasing wretchedness in sin. 

Iff'] The lost in hell must be regarded as the refuse 
of a moral universe. They are those on whom moral 
government has tried and served out its instrumentality 
without success. They are the few, it may be hoped, 
as compared with the saved and the happy of all worlds ; 
but, few or many, moral government holds over and on 
them. They must endure its claims, and be put where 
they will do the least hurt. They must be a spectacle 
to the universe, and its instruction against sin. 

[h] God in administering the behests of moral gov- 
ernment on the finally impenitent, will be complete in 
righteousness, and be fully justified by the necessities 
of the case, and in the hearts of all right minded intel- 
ligences. 

p] The conscience of the lost will justify the ways of 
God. 



TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES. 199 

VIII. FINAL STATE OP THE SAVED. 

[a] It will be a state of freedom from sin. 
[b~] It will be a state of active holiness, ever increas- 
ing and expanding in the love and likeness of God. 

[c] One of unalloyed, and perfect yet ever increasing 
blessedness. 

[d] One of perfect Divine approbation and favor. 

[e\ One of uninterrupted and rapid intellectual cul- 
ture and attainment. 

[ /'] One of the highest culture and delight of the 
social affections, and emotional nature generally. 

[g\ One of greatest activity in the service of God. 

\h~] One of wide communion with the servants of 
God. All worlds and all space may be its theatre. 

[t] As stated in the caption, it will be final, and eter- 
nal. It is so by divine appointment, and by laws of the 
intelligence. 



200 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 



CHAPTER XVIXI. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO COMMON SENSE. 

[a] Religion is and must be an intuition of mind ; its 
statements must be intuitional, or reduced to those 
which are. All truth must be, in order to be appre- 
ciated. 

[h] Religion is a first truth in reason. Moral govern- 
ment follows from the existence of God, and our exist- 
ence. The obligations of religion are inherent in the 
relations of the Infinite and the finite, and must be pal- 
pable to each, and lie in the sphere of common sense. 

[c] The subjective and the objective coalesce and 
harmonize in the teachings of religion and illustrate 
them to each other. They correspond with and respond 
to each other, in all the statements and requirements of 
religion. That can not be true which the mind can not 
appreciate as such. Ignorance and perversion may hin- 
der the rightful operation of the intelligence, but truth 
in religion will sustain and justify its largest scope, and 
be sustained and justified by its largest attainments in 
knowledge and investigation. 



TO COMMON SENSE. 201 

[d] All truth is intuitionally apprehended by the divine 
mind ; it is therefore capable of being so apprehended. 
We are made in the image of God, and therefore made 
to apprehend and appreciate truth in our measure as he 
does, though the process and helps of the finite are pe- 
culiar, and all progress in attainment advances us on in 
the intuitional apprehension of all truth — "seeing as we 
are seen, and knowing as we are known." 

[e] Moral government endorses this statement, and 
demands this recognition in the ideas of the reason, and 
the conclusions of common sense. 

[/] Much is gained in this harmony of reason and 
objective truth — this coincidence and consent of " the 
me" and "the not me." It is both guide and detector 
— it helps to show what can, and what can not be. 

(g) It is a mistake in theology to have its statements 
belie the principles of common sense, or be such that 
the mind can not get a reliable and legitimate ground 
of conviction in their truth. Revelation is made to the 
principles of the intelligence, and will be consistent 
with them. It is both nugatory, and false to God, to 
propound for religious doctrine that which can not be 
appreciated. 

[h] This would be a needless and grievous mistake. 
Truth is one, and God is one, and man is made in his 
image, to apprehend, appreciate, and honor and love 
him. Enigmas and contradictions of the first princi- 
ples of morals and of belief do great harm. They 
palm on Revelation what does not belong to it, and 
tend to destroy confidence in it, and a sense of obliga- 
tion for it. 



202 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

[«] Mysteries in religion, or in the statement of re- 
ligious doctrine, must not compromit first principles of 
truth or belief, but must be the suggestions of truth in 
accordance with them although from our immaturity we 
may not be able to comprehend them. Some things we 
fully know, now. The first truths of reason can not 
but be true. The conviction of them is irresistible in 
their own light. They are true, whatever else is, or is 
not, — that God is, and is infinitely perfect, and is to be 
worshiped, and has moral government, with all its legit- 
imate principles and issues. Mysteries must not con- 
trovert these. They lie on in coincidence with them, 
in the range of truth and concrete reality farther than 
we can see, yet they are properly subjective, and not 
objective. They will not contradict what we do know, 
but be in aid by their announcement of our imperfect 
vision of what lies beyond. 

[&J The future will enlarge the intuitional basis of our 
theology, and the strength of the popular conviction in 
the word of God. 

17] The gospel will yet have free course and be glori- 
fied. All science and truth and general cultivation will 
help it. It has now the greatest sway in the most in- 
telligent portions of the earth, and in the most intelli- 
gent portions of given communities. 

[m] The gospel will be found to be the hand-maid 
and the medium of a universal civilization. 



TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT, 203 



CHAPTER XIX. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

[a] God is the only original source and depositary of 
authority. If he is not, there is no authority or 
objective foundation for it, or for morality or character 
any way. The atheist can have but conventional 
arrangements among men, and in the interest of ex- 
pediency only, and even these without consistency or 
fixedness in moral principle and without moral obliga- 
tion for their observation. Without a God there is no 
morality. As you could not administer an oath, so you 
could not obligate a man to keep his word, or speak the 
truth. Conscience would then be a half truth, to be 
triumphantly and consistently beaten down by the 
passions. 

[5] Civil government is an ordinance of God, and 
gains its validity in that way. It is by delegation ; the 
civil magistrate is God's minister to this end, and the 
state is God's appointment for highest good. It is with- 
out binding force on the conscience except for this. 



204 MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED 

Being divinely authorized, subjection to it is a religious 
duty. 

[c] A specific form of civil society or government is 
not required as a universality. It will vary with the 
state and progress of general civilization in a commu- 
nity or in the world. With the growth of intelligence 
and virtue will be the prevalance of equal rights and the 
emanation of government from the people and for them. 

[d] Civil government aims at real rectitude of charac- 
ter, and the prevention of all viciousness of heart in its 
sphere, and fails only in its means for the detection of 
sin. Its methods and evidences must be palpable, but 
its inquiry is after the state and crime of the heart, and 
asks for the " malice prepense." Its theory is that of 
real guilt and real righteousness, though obliged to 
study its doctrine in the light of overt acts. 

[e] Civil government has subjective validity in the 
the moral nature of man. 

(/) Civil pains and punishments or penalties, are 
legitimate, and should be administered as under au- 
thority derived from God. 

(g) Punishment in the state should have strict regard 
to the question of deserts. 

(h) As civil government is based on the divine gov- 
ernment and assumes it, so should it accept its princi- 
ples, and come into harmony and likeness with it. 

(i) The maturity of the world will convince this har- 
mony and coalescence. 

(k) The Bible will yet be the statute book of nations, 
— not in form, but in principles, in spirit, and life. 

(/) The nations will yet be one ; not in form, per- 



TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 205 

haps, but in administration, in laws, in aim, in spirit, 
and in mutually striving together for the peace, pros- 
perity and welfare of each other. 

(m) A millenium is as much a reasonable result and 
outgrowth of human society as it is the appointment 
of God. 

(?i) The subjective and the objective coalesce in the 
suggestions of prophecy respecting the latter day. 

(o) Art, science, the Gospel, and the grace of God — 
the aspirations of humanity, and the composition and 
momentum of its forces in the interior and exterior 
spheres, under God, are conspiring together for it. 



206 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 



CHAPTER XX. 

MORAL GOVERNMENT AS RELATED TO THE FAMILY CON- 
STITUTION. 

(a) The family state, a primeval arrangement. 
{b) It is a divine constitution for propagation of the 
earthly being and securing its experience and benefit. 

(c) The elements of it — parents, — children born to 
them, — ■ parental love and care — filial dependence and 
need — parental authority and guidance — filial submis- 
sion and obedience. 

(d) The wisdom of it. It provides support, over- 
sight, instruction, culture, training. Knowledge is an 
experience and not a creation. Derived mind begins 
at zero, and must in some way [first] be taught what it 
knows [comes to know.] 

(<?) The family relation is a type of the divine — God 
is our Father— Christ our elder Brother. 

(/) Husband and wife — relations — reciprocal duties. 

{g) Rights and duties of parents. 

(k) Rights and duties of children. 

(i) Relations of brothers and sisters — corresponding 
duties. 

(y) Obligations of children to aged parents- — to pa- 
rents when poor and infirm, 



CONCLUSION. 207 



CONCLUSION. 

(a) It has been the design of the foregoing chapters 
to present an intuitional scheme of thought, — to appre- 
hend the unity of reason and religion, and to give the 
adaptations and coincidence of objective truth, in the 
inevitable verities and laws of the intelligence which 
God has given us. As God apprehends all truth intui- 
tionally, so is it capable of being so apprehended. 
This is its only true appreciation, and all advance of 
thought in this direction, and all reconcilement of truth 
and satisfactory comprehension of it, in the light of the 
necessary laws of the intelligence is so much gained 
from the domain of the unknown and added to knowl- 
edge. Improvement here is the enlargement of mind 
— its rest and satisfaction. Our intuitional convictions 
preclude debate, doubt, and misgiving. Their language 
is, "this I know, I see it must be so." All the lines of 
truth converge upon it, and we abide in it as we do in 
the intelligence of the senses. 

(b) A further object has been to unify and give uni- 
versality to the principles of morals. These are essen- 



208 MORAL GOVERNMENT. 

tially the same in underived and derived intelligence, — 
in God and in those made in his image. To God per- 
tain the rights and the prerogatives of an independent 
Creator, but on this account he may not do wrong and 
punish the innocent with the guilty. "Shall not the 
Judge of all the earth do right?" God owes it to 
himself and to his image in the finite, to do what is just 
and right — to be good and benevolent ; and he would 
falsify himself and all unfallen intelligence to be other- 
wise. 

Systems of theology have been equivocal and faulty 
at this point. Some writers have gone so far as to 
assert that "God is above morality, and that no rule 
reaches him." The difficulty has been of a dogmatic 
origin. It has arisen from a supposed theological neces- 
sity, and from giving a strict, metaphysical interpreta- 
tion to the popular, oriental phraseology of the Bible. 
Thus the character of God has been compromitted in 
giving his relations to sin. We would avoid that, and 
find in the generic unity of truth a satisfactory and in- 
tuitional vindication of the first principles of morals, in 
their application both to the infinite and the finite. We 
think this is done in the scheme of thought here sug- 
gested, and the subject cleared of that mystery which 
has been wont to hang over it, to its immense disparage- 
ment and injury. 

(c) We have endeavored to treat the subject of moral 
government as lying wholly in the supernatural sphere. 
This gives a proper personality to the will, and clothes 
it with legitimate freedom and responsibility. It ab- 
solves the Infinite from the responsibility of being sole 



CONCLUSION. 209 

cause in the universe, and admits that there may be that 
in the moral sphere and descending thence to the physi- 
cal, which God does not will or appoint, but which is 
averse to all his purposes, and which he circumvents 
and overcomes and brings good out of, by methods like 
himself, and eventually by retributive power. This 
preserves the unity of God, — vindicates the Divine 
morality, and gives meaning and vividness to the doc- 
trine of right and wrong. This harmonizes with con- 
science, and impresses with vitality the doctrines of 
grace and all the features of a moral system. 

(d) Our course of thought, also, indicates the har- 
mony of the philosophical and of the positive in truth. 
Discrepancy here has been the great clog on the wheels 
of improvement and progress in knowledge. Men have 
stumbled on and been discouraged because of the dis- 
agreement of theories with facts and first principles. 
The consistent appreciation of the supernatural, and the 
necessary elements of a moral system solve the problem, 
vindicate virtue, and throw the legitimate responsibility 
where it belongs. This is the demand of conscience, 
and no system of ethics can be satisfactory, or lay claim 
to perfectness without it. To gain this, and harmonize 
the teachings of the a priori and of the a posteriori meth- 
ods, is the great problem in moral truth. 

(e) Our great aim has been for the unity of being — 
the grand harmonies of the moral sphere, in its design 
and conduct from the hand of God. God is one, — 
the universe must be. Principles must be universal, — 
so must be the first truths of reason, — the law of morals, 
and the doctrine of conscience, and the principles of 

14 



210 CONCLUSION. 

common sense. We would strike this chord, gain this 
interior element of truth, and by it adjust the relations 
of existence, and see that divine philosophy which, ema- 
nating from God, runs through his works, and is sum- 
marily propounded in that comprehensive passage of 
his word : — " For the invisible things of Him from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood 
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and 
Godhead. — Rom. i:20. 



PART III. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 



III. 

FOURTEEN THESES; 



OR 



OUTLINES OF THEOLOGY. 



I. THE BEING OF GOD. 

In this age of rapid movements, crude opinions 
and surface work, there are yet those that think, that 
inquire after the philosophy of religious belief — that 
would gain the first truths of reason, and reconcile 
therewith the statements of theology and the doctrines 
of the Church. 

1st. Theology is moral science in the department of 
religion. 

2d. It is embraced in the three categories, — the ' In- 
finite, the finite, and the relation between them. 

L— The Being of God. 

1st. Somethmg is. — (Proof) — (1) The senses ; (2) con- 
sciousness ; (3) universal conviction and consent. 

2d. Something always was. — The derved implies the 



216 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

underived ; the created, the uncreated ; the finite and 
dependent, the absolute and independent. 

3d. Original of being, not matter. — Matter not inher- 
ently cause — has a reason for being, and being in one 
place rather than another — is dependent; a thing 
placed ; is in itself without design or end. 

4th. Original of being, spiritual, personal intelligence 
— the " I Am," of the Bible. Intelligence is cause per 
se ; it only is cause ; acts from design ; has an end in 
what it does. This is true of derived intelligence — 
much more of the underived. 

oth. Knowledge has a chronological method and a 
logical method. We are, therefore God is. The being 
of God is pre-supposed and known in the being of any- 
thing else. It must be that God is, if anything is. 

6th. We may know that that is, which we can not 
comprehend — hence may know God, and that He is, 
though not able to comprehend the Infinite. 

7th. It is not to be expected that derived intelligence 
will comprehend the underived ; the law of knowledge 
is by analogy. 

8th. If the finite, created, is only by the Infinite, 
uncreated, then is the Being of God the complement of 
all knowledge and thought, and God is all His works. 

II. THE PERFECTIONS OP GOD. 

Both physical and moral are Infinite. 

1st. If not infinite, then is He finite, limited, created 
dependent, and then not God. 

2d. Rectitude is the moral state and method of all 
intelligence. ■' 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 217 

3d. Infinite, personal intelligence, could not act 
legitimately or satisfactorily to itself except rightly, and 
according to truth. 

4th. Moral wrong is only by defection from right — 
is by way of apostasy ; — in God is no ground of 
change. 

5th. Sin is a mistake as well as a mislead, and as 
such could not be predicable of the Infinite, or be of 
the nature of intelligent action in Him. 

6th. Malevolence is never an end. Sin has the real 
sanction and subsidy of no mind, as that which is in 
itself desirable. It is never chosen for its own sake : — 
the vilest are ashamed of it, seen in its true light and 
under the testimony of conscience. 

7th. Our constituent being " made in the image of 
God," repudiates wrong — "the law in the mind," as 
contrasted, with the " law in the members." 

8th. The Jehovah of the Scriptures, with all perfec- 
tion of knowledge, of power, of wisdom, goodness and 
truth, and every attribute of the uncreated, absolute, 
One, infinitely and immutably. 

Inferences. — 1st. The Divine economy is pure ancl^er- 
fect in all morality. 

2d. All imperfection, and wrong and ill, is through 
the abuse of that which in its normal method and on- 
going, is right and good. 

3d. Sin is in the finite, and is resultant of the abnor- 
mal action and movements of finite cause. 

4th. The Judge of all the earth will do right 

5th. We ought to have unlimited confidence in the 
wisdom, rectitude, and faithfulness of God. 



218 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 



III. THE WOKKS OF GOD. 



1st. A quiescent Deity is a solecism. God is an in- 
telligence — a cause — a power: He will haye forth- 
goings and work. 

2d. A work is of necessity in the finite. It is some- 
thing done — a factum ; a reason for it, and a cause of it 
lie out of, and before it. It has time, and place, and 
all the accidents of the finite. 

3d. The forthgoings and work of God will be the 
result of His perfections, and truly represent them — 
their cast, and design, and method, and scheme, and 
end, will be such as a Being of perfect rectitude can 
approve. 

4th. The work of God, so far as known to us, or ap- 
preciative by us, will be in the physical and moral 
spheres — matter and mind — nature and spirit — things 
and persons — irresponsible existence and responsible, 
intelligent beings. 

5th. The physical sphere will be in subordination to 
the moral or spiritual, and for its sake, and adapted to 
its developement and behests. 

6th. A moral system or sphere, with intelligent beings 
in the likeness and after the image of God, is a perfect 
work. Nothing else could be better, or be in its place, 
for this is like God, and truly a result of His perfec- 
tions, and its moral ongoing must, manifest Him and be 
worthy of Him. 

7th. Such a system, including God and all other in- 
telligences, is inherently an end in itself, and the high- 
est end. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 219 

8th. It is unreason to ask anything else in the place 
of such a system. 

Inferences : — 1st. The present not a choice of systems, 
as though embodying on the whole the fewest evils and 
the most good. Such a category would put God into 
the finite. His economy is a perfection and not a bal- 
ancing of expedients. It is a rectitude, and any imper- 
fection in it, would ruin it for Him and render it un- 
worthy of Him. 

2d. All evil originates in the infraction of the Di- 
vine economy, and moral evil is the parent of all other 
evil. 

3d. No good reason can be given, or need be attempt- 
ed, for the existence of wrong. 

4th. The existence of moral evil is not to be resolved 
in a theistic argument, and no vindication of the char- 
acter of God is called for in relation to it. 

5th. Sin is in every respect antagonist) cal to God- 
to his purposes, and end in all things, and implies the 
righteousness and perfection of His being, economy 
and ways. 

IV. MORAL PRINCIPLES THE CO-ORDINATE OF MORAL BEING. 

1st. Moral principles inhere in moral relations. 

2d. Like all mere qualities they must inhere in some 
ground, and that ground is moral beings ; they imply 
and have personality. 

3d. The relations of the Infinite and the finite involve 
and evoke them. Worship and obedience are not more 
an appointment of God than the demand of our being 
and a meet response from the relations subsisting be- 



220 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

tween us and Himself. God appoints them, and in- 
structs us in respect to them, because they are in them- 
selves meet and due. 

4th. A Divine revelation to us would be of the nature 
of a manifestation to the principles of being in us, and 
on the ground of the relations subsisting between us 
and God. 

5th. The Bible has its doctrinal basis in the elements 
of all truth, growing out of the being and relations of 
the Infinite and the finite — the conscience attesting the 
obligation of Divine precepts. 

6th. A revelation from God is information from the 
depths of the Infinite, on principles of truth recognized 
in our being and inherent relations to God. 

7th. From the nature of the intelligence, sin wounds 
the conscience — it would if in the Infinite as well as in 
the finite. " That be far from thee to slay the right- 
eous with the wicked. Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right ?" 

8th. Natural ill is inherently consequent on moral 
wrong. It is not so much by overt appointment as in- 
herent connection, from the nature and relations of the 
intelligence. 

9th. God modifies and uses this relation of natural ill 
to moral wrong, for purposes of probation, and all ends 
in righteousness in a moral system. 

10. Retribution is naturally and cumulatively conse- 
quent on sin and probation. 

Hence, — 1st. The Bible and reason are not in disa- 
greement. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 221 

2d. Natural religion is a stepping-stone to that which 
is revealed. 

3d. Revelation is exegetical of natural religion. 

4th. Objective truth has its prototypes in the ideas of 
the reason. 

5th. All Divine precepts are adapted to our moral 
being and inherently obligatory. 

V. THE PURPOSES OF GOD. 

I. — Purposes are a mental state or determination of 
mind, antecedent to, and conditional for an action of the 
agent purposing. 

II. — The purposes of God are His mental determin- 
ations, concerning His own work, or of what he will do. 

1st. This is the universal law of intelligence. One 
purposes his own conduct, and what influence to exert 
on others in behalf of objects desirable to him. 

2d. A purpose, like a conception, is necessarily orig- 
inal, and personal in the mind that has it. Two indi- 
viduals may have like purposes in relation to the same 
object, -but then their purposes are distinct, and it is 
every way unphilosophical to hold them as identical, 
and to say that one purposes the purposes of the other. 

3d. Free original thought, and design, and voluntary 
action are the characteristic and law of mind. It is so 
in the Infinite ; it is so in those intelligences, " made in 
His image." 

4th. God secures desired ends through a scheme and 
providence of His own, and " according to the counsel 
of his own will;" meeting, antagonizing with, or accept- 
ing the action, or plans, or purposes of others, as may 



222 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

seem best to Him— his thoughts are not their thoughts, 
nor their ways His — by "bringing light out of darkness 
and order out of confusion," &c. 

5th. In this way is the glory of God secured, as rela- 
ted to the machinations and work of wicked agents — 
not by planning their plans and purposing their pur- 
poses — but through a plan and purpose of His own, 
circumventing, overruling, defeating them, and bringing 
good out of evil. 

6th. That philosophy is unsound and fallacious which 
prescribes a Divine programme, and ordination of all 
that is, in the responsible, moral sphere. 

7th. We know that much is, in the responsible, moral 
sphere that God does not will, or devise, or want. 

8th. We see no need of God's willing or ordaining 
moral wrong in order for it to be : it is essentially anti- 
theistic. 

9th. Physical ills, as the result of moral wrong, may 
be Divinely modified and used for good. 

10th. The purposes of God are in accordance with all 
morality, and appreciably so. 

11th. Resignation to evils, which are consequent on 
wrong received, springs not so properly from the fact 
that they take place, as from the overruling and recu- 
perative agency and influence of God, in our behalf, re- 
specting them. 

12th. The purposes of God are equivalent to, and 
identical with an ever-present discretion in righteousness, 
in thte sphere of the Infinite. 

Hence, — 1st. There is unity of being and of charac- 
ter in God. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 223 

2d. There is an appreciable morality in God. 

3d. The pure and holy Jesus was a truthful manifes- 
tation of God. 

4th. Our theology need not stumble, or be perplexed 
at the doctrine of the purposes of God. 

oth. No good reason need be attempted for the in- 
ception of moral wrong. 

6th. Sin is every way without excuse. 

7th. The decrees of God are no bar to prayer. They 
are but the righteous decisions of One who abides ever 
in the present, to minister to the wants of His creatures, 
and answer those who cry unto Him. 

VI. MIND INHERENTLY CAUSE AND SELF-CONTROLLED. 

1st. This is true of the Divine mind, by universal 
concession. 

2d. Finite intelligence is made in the Divine like- 
ness. 

3d. This is the doctrine of consciousness. 

4th. This is essential to personality. 

5th. This is essential to responsibility. 

6th. This is the doctrine of law, of probation, and 
penalty, as applied to intelligent beings. 

7th. This is admitted in the propositions of mercy. 

8th. This is involved in all exhortation, all submission 
of truth for practical purposes, in all discipline, rewards, 
and punishments. Why exhort to that which cannot 
be withheld, or which is already in your own power ? 

9th. This is of the very element of will, as contra- 
distinguished from the necessitated faculties of mind. 



224 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

Hence, — 1st. The sovereignty of our voluntary state 
is with ourselves. 

2d. All influences from without, and means of mov 
ipg mind, are submitted to its arbitrament, and discre- 
tion, and responsibility, as to the response we give. 

3d. The finite can resist and disobey the Infinite, and 
often does. 

4th. That may be, which God does not will, and as he 
is of one mind, which he has never willed or deter- 
mined. 

oth. It is irrelevant to inquire why God has not pre- 
vented all sin and wrong. 

6th. A moral economy may, in probation, but imper- 
fectly accomplish the will of God. 

7th. Probation has a natural result in retribution. 

8th. God may never regain in all hearts, and see his 
will done in all minds ; he will never have the spiritual 
control of the finally impenitent and lost ones. 

9th. The question of power, or almightiness in God, 
is out of place when applied to the coercion or absolute 
control of the will in his intelligent creatures. 

10th. All gospel influences are resistible by the mind. 

11th. These influences may nevertheless prevail, and 
yet increasingly, " in ages to come," and the world be 
converted to Christ. 

12th. Men may repent, as they ought, when they can 
hold out in impenitence, as others do. 

13th. Moral government has an eventual resort, in 
physical force, in respect to those who refuse compli- 
ance with its righteous dictates. God fixes the physi- 
cal condition of the finally impenitent and lost, but their 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 225 

wills will never be under his control, or be as he would 
have them to be. 

VII. THE METHOD OF THE DEITY. 

The method of the Deity, in all his works, is a pure 
righteousness, and every way consistent with the first 
principles of morality. 

1st. He is an infinitely perfect, spiritual being. 

2nd. His contrast, and great ultimate end, must be 
worthy of him, self-satisfactory to himself, and morally 
like himself. 

3d. His object must be the greatest righteousness 
of his intelligent creatures, and their highest moral 
likeness to himself, and the greatest good as therein 
contained. 

4th. Any dereliction from this on the part of his in- 
telligent offspring, must incur his rebuke and displeas- 
ure as contrary to his will, and a disruption of his 
method and design in all his works. 

5th. The manifestations of the Deity on the actual 
outbreak of wrong, on the part of angels and men, and 
his position in respect to sin ever since, evince this. 

6th. A method or plan of things is for the sake of its 
execution, and is nugatory and worthless without it. 

7th. A method or plan of things has the moral qual- 
ity of its execution. 

8th. God would institute no method or plan of things 

whose execution he could not approve. The outbreak 

of sin would complicate the divine relations to wrong, 

and the methods of God's antagonism to it, but an 

15 



226 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

original, Divine economy will be pure in all righteous- 
ness. 

9th. Sin, as a device, is essentially antitheistic, and 
could be no part of a Divine plan, or economy of 
things. 

10th. Any propositional relation to sin in the Divine 
scheme of the universe, would be suicidal in God, and 
could not meet the approval of intelligences made in his 
image. 

11th. No such relation to wrong in a scheme of 
things, could be imitated by those made in the 
image of God, without incurring his displeasure and 
rebuke. 

12th. Such a relation would involve the absurdity, 
that there can be a good reason for an intrinsic 
wrong. 

13th. And also, that wrong, whenever and where- 
ever it occurs, is better than right. Hence, 

14th. That wrong as it exists is the best thing pos- 
sible and therefore is not wrong. 

15th. We are instructed to be the followers of God 
as dear children, but cannot without self-condemnation, 
imitate him, in a scheme of things, which devises and 
plans that which is morally wrong. 

16th. Our constituent moral being, which is like that 
of God, repudiates a wrong method, as much as a 
wrong act. 

17th. Sin cannot be a Divine expedient, — James i. 
12 : 17, — God can not be tempted with evil. 

18th. If God ordains moral evil, it must be for a good 
reason, which involves a palpable solecism. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 227 

19th. If God ordains wrong, then is wrong needful in 
a right system, and a right system is defective and im- 
perfect without it, and a wrong is necessary to a perfect 
moral system, and a part of it, and is therefore not a 
wrong. 

20th. If God ordains wrong, it is out of preference to 
its being, to anything else in its place, [or because he 
prefers it rather than anything else in its place ;] and 
where wrong is, he prefers it to right, and chooses 
moral evil there to moral good, and if so, then is there 
no unity or determination of moral character in God. 
Hence, 

Inferences : — 1st. Sin does not ask God's leave to be 
2d. Sin has not God's permission or consent to be. 

VIII. A MORAL SYSTEM. 

A moral system is a perfect work, and a divine neces- 
sity, though sin and wrong are an inherent liability 
under it. 

I. — It is a perfect work. 

1st. It is the work of an Infinite and perfect Being. 

2d. It is in the end [to secure the end] of a universal 
and perfect righteousness, and [is] capable of it. 

3d. Its crowning work and reason are intelligent 
beings, "in the image of God," and for this end, and 
adapted to it. 

4th. It gives a true and proper personality, like that 
of Gocl. 

5th. It involves a legitimate and proper responsibility 
and destiny. 



228 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

6th. It furnishes, subjectively and objectively, (within 
and without,) all requisite grounds for perfect excel- 
lence of character and state. 

7th. Nothing else, or other than such a system, made 
in the likeness of God, and for such an end, could be, 
without being imperfect, and being unworthy of God. 
And hence, 

II. — A moral system as above, is in some sense a 
Divine necessity. It has the perfect freedom and whole 
soul of the Deity in its behalf as nothing else or other- 
wise could have. Nothing different would be of the 
nature of intelligent action in God. Right intelligence 
for a right end is the sphere and true expression of the 
infinite, and of a Divine economy in the finite and 
created of being. 

1st. Finite mind acts often on defective or imperfect 
promises, and may be mistaken ; God never. 

2d. Finite mind may, through change and inconsis- 
tency, get at fault with truth, and right, and God, and 
come to hate and resist Him ; but God never. 

3d. Infinite intelligence can see no reason against 
truth and right, or for sin and wrong, and must ever be 
of one spirit and one mind for the eternal rectitude of a 
moral system. 

III. — Sin and wrong an inherent liability under moral 
government or in a moral system. 

1st. A moral system has free cause in the finite. 

2d. A power to do right is a power to do wrong, and 
in the finite the alternative may become an actuality. 

3d. A moral system involves the legitimate and proper 
submission of the question of right and wrong, of char- 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 229 

acter and destiny, and would be a worthless pageant 
without it. 

4th. Its central idea is the discretion and responsibil- 
ity of free intelligence and will. 

5th. Its vitality, excellence and glory, lie in this, that 
its righteousness is not imposed and inevitable, but 
elective, and in the place of something else that might 
be, and which would be wrong. 

6th. All personality involves this, and would be re* 
duced to mere thing without it. 

7th. All conscious reponsibility is based on this, and 
is impossible without it. 

8th. We are conscious, only, of moral resistible in- 
fluences, in relation to conduct and character, conformity 
or the want of it, to righteousness and law. 

9th. It cannot be proved that any other influences 
in this regard exist, or are possible. 

10th. The principle that underlies the whole subject 
of law, prohibition, exhortation, warning, penal inflic- 
tion, &c, in this regard. Does one exhort to that which 
lies in his power? 

11th. The question of fact. Sin could not be with- 
out the liability of it. Its existence shows the liability 
of it in a moral system. 

Inferences. — 1st. A moral system is not responsible 
for its abuse. 

2d. A moral system cannot be altered, even though 
it may be abused. 

3d. The question of sin belongs not in an argument 
concerning God. God is not its father ; it is not of his 
economy for a universe, but outside of it, in one of its 
own, and is essentially antitheistic. 



230 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

4th. The inquiry is irrevelant and absurd which asks 
why God does not prevent all sin. The element of 
electiveness is essentially in a moral system. Its means 
may all be expended, and yet its subjects go astray. It 
always submits the question of obedience to the mind's 
voluntary arbitrament. 

5th. That may occur under a moral system, which is 
in no sense in accordance with the will of God ; which 
may be like rebellion, to the will and strategy of the 
state. 

9th. As sin is not a Divine method, God may exer- 
cise his discretion as to the time and way of manifest- 
ing his antagonism against it — may let the wicked fall 
into the pit which they have digged, and even let sin 
be the means of its own discomfiture, and of accom- 
plishing his benevolent purposes against it, and for its 
overthrow. 

7th. A probationary economy does not of course 
(may not) accomplish the whole will of God, or witness 
only that which is according to his will. 

8th. Retribution has the element of physical power. 

9th. The supremacy of God is through an indepen- 
dent economy of His own, circumventing sin, triumph- 
ing over it ; either first by moral methods in probation, 
or eventually in retribution, to the honor of all right- 
eousness and truth. 

IX. SIN NOT AN EXPEDIENT IN THE DIVINE ECONOMY. 

In these theses it is not claimed that each succeed- 
ing one is wholly an advance from the previous ones, but 
that in the use of them, it presents some additional 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 231 

view of the subject in hand, and adds something to 
the stock of thought intended — and to-day as follows, 
viz. : — 

Sin cannot be an expedient in the Divine economy of the 
universe. 

I. — i s t. Uaraesxii, 17: "For God cannot be tempt- 
ed with evil," &c. 

2d. This would imply that there is a good reason for 
the existence of wrong, and that where it exists it is 
better and more desirable than right. 

3d. Sin is never only a means to an end, and if it be 
the Divine resort in an economy of things, then is God, 
in this respect in the same catagory with all others who 
make it a resort in the plans and purposes they form. 

4th. As sin is but an intrinsic wrong, an essential un- 
reason, it is impossible that God should see reason for it 
in the Divine economy of the universe. 

5th. As sin is essentially antitheistic, it is logically 
impossible that it should be an ingredient in the divine 
economy or an expedient of it. 

6th. If sin is a divine expedient, then must God see 
reason for the infraction of his own law, which thing is 
absurd, and this 

7th. Would imply that God is not immutable, and, 
of course, that he exists in the finite. 

8th. If sin be a divine expedient, then is it a divine 
necessity, and God is dependent on it, in his own econ- 
omy, for the greatest good. 

9th. If sin be a divine expedient, then is not the 
right and normal ongoing of a perfect moral system the 



232 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

best method for it, and imperfection and wrong are bet- 
ter than perfection and right, and if so, then 

10th. A perfect righteousness is not the highest 
good. 

11th. Then, too, is not the law of God perfect in its 
requirements, and perfect obedience to it is not a duty, 
and it is better broken than kept. 

12th. If sin be a divine expedient, then does God see 
infinitely good reasons for it, and that wherever it ex- 
ists it could not be exchanged for anything else with- 
out detriment to a moral system. 

13th. If so, then is it not contrary to the will of 
God, and then it is what God would have to take place, 
and then is it not wrong, and then, too, is it not sin, and 
sin is an impossibility; and then, too, is likeness to God 
and conformity to his will impossible without sin. 

14th. The heart of God would revolt at, and repu- 
diate, such an expedient as sin in his method of the 
universe. 

15th. It would be to adopt the false and pernicious 
maxim, that " the end sanctifies the means." 

16th. It is impossible that sin should be a resort, as a 
method to an end, of any but a finite and wrong-minded 
being. 

17th. Those made in the image of God and who are 
commanded to be like him, cannot follow such a lead 
in their methods of securing results without forfeiting 
perfection of character. 

18th. The conscience which God has given us, as the 
transcript of his own, will not endorse such a resort in 
the plans we lay and the methods we employ. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 233 

19th. If sin be a divine resort in the scheme of the 
universe, then is it clothed with the dignity of a divine 
strategy, and entitled to the respect which belongs to 
the plans and purposes of God. 

20th. Then, too, ought we to know this, and to feel 
that when we are sinning, we are subserving the high- 
est interests of the universe, and then, likewise, ought 
we to sin in the spirit of obedience to the will of God. 
But 

II. — 1st. If sin be not an expedient and resort in the 
divine economy of the universe, so it need not be : it 
is essentially antitheistic, and is abundantly accounted 
for in finite cause contravening and counteracting the 
will, and purposes, and great end, which God has in 
view in all his works. 

2d. If sin be not a divine expedient, &c, then "to its 
own master, it standeth or falleth." 

3d. And then, too, is not conscience a mislead, and 
a perfect divine moral government is no mistake and 
no pageant. 

4th. Then, too, is the divine prohibition of sin, at 
first, and always consistent, and appreciable, and exe- 
getical of the unity and moral perfectness of all his 
relations to it. 

5th. Then thus, also, is his providential rebuke of 
sin, and his final settlement of woe on all those who 
persist in it. 

6th. Then, too, is not the gospel merely part of a 
divine strategy, in common with sin, but a real divine 
remedy against it, and its outbreak in the finite contrary 
to the will and prohibition of God. 



284 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

7th. And hence the consistency of repentance of sin, 
in order to forgiveness under the gospel. 

8th. If sin be not God's expedient in his divine 
method of the universe, and all his relations to it are 
consistent with perfect rectitude, then his peace of mind 
is not disturbed by it, any more than that of any other 
perfectly good being, in view of wrong. 

9th. As sin is thus in no sense of God, he may exer- 
cise his sovereign discretion in his methods against it 
within the sphere of all rectitude and goodness — may 
let it be for its own rebuke and discomfiture, and even 
yield His Son to the power of his own enemies, " that 
through death he might conquer him who had the 
power of death," and be the life of the world, and 
thus bring order out of confusion, and light out of 
darkness. 

10th. As God is in the right, in this controversy 
with sin and the powers of darkness, and has therewith 
all the moral and physical rescources of the Infinite, 
we may confidingly know that, according to his Word, 
he will reign until he has put all his enemies under 
his feet, and eternally vindicate the excellency and 
glory, and triumph of all righteousness, and goodness, 
and truth. 

Finally. — The prayers and labors of all good men in 
behalf of the cause of Christ and against sin, and the 
common sense of all men on all subjects, are a united 
testimony for the validity and correctness of the view 
here taken. 

P. S. — I propose but two more themes in this series 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 235 

— the method of the Divine Supremacy and the terms of a 
completed moral science. 

X. THE SUPREMACY OF GOD. 

How does the Infinite comprehend the Finite f or, How is 
God Supreme? 

1st. Not that he is the only cause. 

2d. Not in absorbing from finite intelligence the 
proper element of personal cause. 

3d. Not in possessing, in relation to finite intelligence, 
direct and absolute sovereignty of its voluntary states. 
This would destroy it. Sovereignty in this regard is of 
the essence of personality, and all legitimate responsi- 
bility. 

4th. Not by the universal programme, and arrange- 
ment of all that is, so that the actual ongoing in the 
moral sphere is resultant of his supremacy, and an ex- 
ponent of, or in accordance with, his plan and purpose 
and will ; and so that nothing shall be, but what he in 
some sense wills. # 

oth. Not by the Divine permission of, or consent to, 
wrong. 

6th. Not by being unmindful or regardless of the 
fearful wrong and remediless effects of sin in a moral 
system. But 

7th. In making, at first, a perfect system and econo- 
my of persons and things with finite intelligence, " in 
his own image, and after his likeness," at its head, 
and for a perfect end, in the highest rectitude and ex- 
cellence. 

8th. In using all the appropriate influences and pre- 



238 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

rogailves of the Infinite to keep it so, and universally 
to attain this end. 

9th. In knowing, intuitively, what are the inherent 
liabilities of a perfect moral system, and the facts of it 
in actual history. 

10th. In being physically omnipotent and indepen- 
dent in the full appropriate sphere of the Infinite, 
"Who doeth all things after the counsel of his own 
will." 

11th. In aiding and sustaining, and influencing, in 
every way of wisdom and truth, all right action in finite 
cause, in accordance with his purpose and great end in 
all things. 

12th. In antagonizing, in every way of wisdom, 
integrity and truth against all wrong there, " bring- 
ing light out of darknesss, and order out of con- 
fusion ; " limiting the prevalence, and remedying the 
effects of sin, and instructing the universe in view 
of it. 

13th. In the use of the prerogatives of the Infinite, 
bringing, however, a triumph at length on all right- 
eousness, and discredit and discomfiture on all sin and 
wrong. 

14th. In reigning to the eventual putting down of 
all sin and confining its adherents to their own place, 
and the exaltation of all righteousness. 

15th. In securing glory to his name, and to all right- 
eousness, in all these his relation to the finite. 

16th. In doing all that, in the moral sphere, to this 
end, both in probation and retribution, which is appro- 
priate to them on the part of the Infinite. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. . 237 

Inferences. — 1st. Then is there legitimate cause and 
responsibility in the finite. 

2d. Then is there unity of moral character and aim 
in the Infinite. 

3d. Then is the Divine moral economy a reality and 
no mere pageant. 

4th. Then may there be that, which is every way con- 
trary to God, and in resistance of his will. 

5th. Then may there be that of which God is in no 
sense the projector, and of which he may say, as in 
the Bible, " I neither spake it, neither came it into my 
mind." 

6th. Then is sin an intrinsic evil, and no way a Divine 
strategy for good. 

7th. There is good connected with sin, only in the 
way of remedy from it and its effects, through a coun- 
teracting Divine providence. 

8th. Then is the condition of the finally lost, the only 
Divine alternative concerning them. 

9th. Then is the supremacy of God, in respect to the 
moral system, more to be observed in its results than in 
its probationary ongoing. " For he must reign until he 
hath put all his enemies under his feet." "For now we 
see not all things put under him." 

XI. THE TERMS OF A COMPLETED MORAL SCIENCE. 

I. — Moral science is not complete while it fails 
to harmonize religious doctrine with the fundamental 
principals of all morality, — our creed with our con- 
science. 



238 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

1st. Conscience is a God-send, — an element of our 
moral being as constituted in the image of God. 

2d. As God is one, our subjective being, as Di- 
vinely constituted, must be in harmony with objective 
truth. 

3d. The conscience is, necessarily, the concrete umpire 
in every question of right. 

4th. The conscience is in harmony with all known 
truth ; and hence 

5th. That is anomalous, and out of place in religious 
doctrine, which belies, or is out of harmony with the 
dictates of conscience as above, and, at least, argues an 
incomplete analysis of the subject. 

II. — Moral science is incomplete while it ignores the 
relations of God to wrong. 

1st. Moral principles are co-ordinates of the Deity ; 
we estimate his character by them, or how know that 
he is good 1 

2d. We were made in his " likeness," and if he is 
"above morality," so may we be. 

3d. God is our example, and we are commanded to 
be perfect as he is. 

4th. He is the objective scource of authority, which 
vests only in righteousness. 

5th. If we do not know God's relations to wrong 
neither then do we know his relations to right, an< 
are at sea, over the whole domain of morality and re- 
ligion. 

6th. Ignorance of the Divine relations to wrong be- 
gets a weakened sense of obligation in ourselves to d , 
and be right. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 239 

III. — Moral science is incomplete while it fails to 
give the doctrine of full and proper personal cause in 
finite intelligence. 

1st. This is the doctrine of consciousness. We have 
the personal "me," and it is legitimate cause, in its own 
behoof, as truly as in the Infinite, and we can not 
ignore it. 

2d. It is essential to responsibility. 

3d. It can only account for the existence of sin, and 
wrong, and thus the terms of a completed moral science 
are that it defines the relations of God to -wrong] and 
harmonizes our religious creed with our conscience and 
the first principles of all morality. 

IV. — The dogma that sin and wrong are a Divine 
strategy, and are introduced into the Divine economy 
as an expedient for good, does not thus harmonize re- 
ligious belief with the first principles of all morality, — ■ 
the creed with the conscience. 

1st. It does not profess to do this, but acknowledges 
the incompatibility in question. 

2d. It argues always, respecting it, to the point of 

ad ignorantiam. 

3d. It asserts that the relations of God to wrong can 
not be resolved, and that he is "above morality" in this 
respect. 

4th. It involves the solecism that a wrong method 
may not be wrong. 

5th. It involves the immorality that " the end sancti- 
fies the means." 

6th. It makes the expedients of mercy to be of the 



240 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

original law of the Divine economy, of which, from the 
nature of the case, they could not be. 

7th. It is exposed to all the objections stated in this 
whole series of Theses. 

V. — The doctrine that makes sin no part of the 
Divine economy, but simply an outbreak from it in 
finite cause, does harmonize with the first principles of 
belief in the conscience and with the doctrines of all 
morality. 

1st. It holds that the relations of God to wrong are 
suggested as a first truth of reason and morality. 

2d. It takes to the point of ad intelligentiam, what the 
other view takes, to that of ad ignorantiam. 

3d. It meets the demands of consciousness, in the 
doctrine of cause, in our voluntary nature. 

4th. It meets the terms of conscience in the question 
of morality. 

5th. Intelligence in finite being constituted " in the 
image of God, and like him," possessing the attribute 
of inherent cause in its sphere, must, as properly as he 
does, originate its voluntary states, and plans, and pur- 
poses, and voluntary acts, on the responsibilities of a 
moral being. 

6th. On no other principle is there any vitality in a 
moral system, and thus this view is demanded by the 
necessities of moral science. 

P. S. — This completes the topics designed at present, 
and may I ask for the whole series a careful revision 
and study by those who would justify religious belief, 
and harmonize the creed with the consience. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 241 

XII. ORIGIN OF THE SOULS OP MEN. 

Are the souls of men the immediate creation of God. 
and Divinely infused and implanted in them severally, 
as they gain each their personal being ; or, are they re- 
sultant of the law of pro-creation and descent, as their 
bodies are in a continuous economy ? Not the first but 
the last. For if the first, then — 

1st. They would be morally pure and perfect like 
God, as were the angels and Adam at their creation. 

2d. Then would there be no hereditary proclivity to 
wrong in the races. 

3d. Then would not there be that progressive deteri- 
oration in clans and tribes of men often, which history 
shows ? 

4th. Then could there be no general lapse of the 
world into heathenism. 

5th. Then would not the influence of a precedent 
generation, on an immediately succeeding one, be what 
it is? 

6th. Then could there be no nature of things in the 
race, in the moral sphere. 

7th. Then would the lesson of history be less instruc- 
tive and responsible, and its experience less important 
and useful. 

8th. Then would the doctrine of morality be less im- 
posing and urgent. 

9th. Then would not the scriptural doctrine of the 
nature and necessity of regeneration be true ? 

10th. Then would the perpetuated idiosyncracies of 
races and tribes and families of men be unaccountable. 
16 



242 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

11th. Then would the origin of the race be renewed 
in every generation. 

But in evidence of the last : — 

1st. A merely corporeal descent is not a descent of 
being, and would not constitute it true that Abraham 
begat Isaac, and Isaac Jacob, and Jacob the twelve 
patriarchs. 

2d. The process of pro-creation is as properly mental 
as corporeal, and may as properly communicate mental 
as corporeal being. 

3d. Children have as much the mental and moral 
peculiarities of their parents, ancestors and tribes, as 
their corporeal peculiarities. 

4th. Resemblance of mind to parents often manifests 
itself in the looks and actions, &c, of children, through 
the mental constitution. The ideal similarity is often 
greater than the bodily. 

5th. The mental and moral peculiarities and habits 
of children are but the reflex of those of their parents, 
often. 

6th. The mental peculiarities of children are often 
but the blended combination of those of both parents. 

7th. The children of intellectual parents {cceteris pa- 
ribus,) are the more intellectual. 

8th. The headship of Adam to the race, in the matter 
of accountability, must refer primarily and chiefly to 
his intellectual and spiritual being. 

9th. The doctrine of an inherited proclivity to evil 
can be true only on this principle. 

10th. The universal depravity of mankind is other- 
otherwise unaccountable. 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 243 

11th. The scriptural doctrine of the necessity of re- 
generation is otherwise untrue. 

12th. The felt tendencies in us to evil otherwise can 
not be accounted for. 

13th. This only lays the legitimate and sufficient 
foundation for the domestic affections of parent and 
child. We name them, and why, if the relation is 
merely corporeal? 

14th. We consciously have those traits of mind 
which our parents evince. 

15th. This is a universal law of being and descent in 
nature and everywhere, — vegetable, animal, after its 
kind, — the whole being is propagated — alterations are 
by cross-breeds and intermixtures — the Infinite, the 
Son, has the moral nature and "status" of the Father. 

Objections : I. — Does not this compromit the doc- 
trine of personal accountability % 

Answer. 1st. In all right and normal action of the 
race, this feature ( »f the economy would be advantageous, 
and would not be complained of. 

2d. That man sinned, and that the race is now off 
the track, and under the law to sin, is not a Divine 
responsibility. 

3d. The law and lead of sin may be expected to be 
unhappy and unprofitable anywhere and any how. 

4th. All sinful indulgence is personal and resistible, 
though a proclivity to it may be inherited. It is but 
the law of all habit and propensity, which one may re- 
sist or comply with on hb individual responsibility. If 
the tendency is innate, so are reason and conscience, 



244 THESES IN THEOLOGY. 

with their plea and rightful sway for rectitude, duty 
and truth. 

5th. There must be personal compliance with wrong 
suggestions and tendencies, in order to be reckoned a 
sinner. 

XIII. THE FORMING AND ARRANGING OF TEMPTATION 

TO SIN. 

Does God form and arrange temptations to sin and 
wrong ? 

Answer. — He makes and arranges all things for up- 
rightness and goodness and truth. The drift and aim 
and design and intent and end of his universal provi- 
dence, is a holy, happy, intelligent universe, like him- 
self — made in his image for union in excellence and 
happiness with himself. The universe he has rilled with 
motives to this, and any other use of them is a perver- 
sion, which he will punish or remedy. 

Proof: — 1st. A Divine activity in uprightness, and 
for it, in the direction of his own perfections, is the 
boundry sphere of the Infinite. 

2d. Any other lead on his part would mar his per- 
fections, and impugn the first principles of all morality. 

3d. Any other lead he would have no heart to, as he 
"doeth all things after the counsel of his own will," and 
would never do. 

4th. For God to sustain a prepositional relation to 
wrong, would be to deny himself. 

5th. The relation of sin, to God, must logically be. 
that of rebellion to the state it plots against. 

6th. God inhibits all wrong, and, therefore, couid 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 245 

in consistency take no measures in favor of its exis- 
tence. 

7th Sin being an intrinsic evil, could not be regard- 
ed by God as the means of good. 

8th. His law is the exponent of his whole will in this 
regard. 

9th. His providence and the conscience he has given 
us rebuke us when we do wrong. 

10th. Sin is direct rebellion against the being and 
government sway of God. 

11th. Sin must be rebutted and remedied, in order to 
have God's end in creation attained. 

12th. Sin must be repented of and repudiated, as 
that which is every way counter to the will and sway 
of God. 

Hence : — 1st. Let no man say when he is tempted, 
"I am tempted of God." 

2d. God's providence universally, is but an argument 
for uprightness and virtue. 

3d. The will of man may in its perversity, turn 
to a wrong use and end a right and well intended 
providence. 

4th. We may pervert to wrong and mischief what 
God means for good. 

XIV. MAINTENANCE OF THE SUPREMACY OF GOD IN THE 
MORAL SPHERE. 

How is the supremacy of God, in the moral sphere, main- 
tained ? 

1st. Not by being the only cause. . * 



246 THESES IN THEOLOGT. 

2d. Not by invading or invalidating the appropriate 
sphere of finite cause. 

3d. Not in that the ongoing in this sphere is always 
as he would have it, or as the transcript of his will. 

4th. Not in that all events as related to their causes, 
or as in themselves, are the best possible. 

5th. Not in having the direct and absolute control 
and sovereignty of the voluntary states and actions of 
finite intelligences. 

But 1st. By the attribute of Omnipotence in its 
proper working in the physical sphere. 

2d. By exerting this power as wisdom directs, and its 
nature admits of in the moral sphere. 

3d. Approximately, through a universe of moral, re- 
sistible influences. 

4th. Approximately through the appropriate methods 
of probation. 

5th. Approximately through the appropriate methods 
of a resultant retribution. 

6th. Through a sphere of independence, in his own 
proper agency, and for his own end, over and above 
all others, and as the case may be in opposition to 
them. 

7th. By an eventually successful combat over wroir^ 
in finite cause. 

8th. Through a recuperative agency against the mis- 
chiefs of wrong in finite cause. 

9th. By, at length, putting down all wrong, and con- 
fining it to its own place* 



THESES IN THEOLOGY. 247 

10th. By, at length, and in the end, exacting all right- 
eousness over wrong, and bestowing all honoi upon it, 
to the discomfiture of all wrong. 

11th. By reigning ever in righteousness himself, &nd 
bringing all willingly or unwilingly, in heart or condi- 
tion, eventually under his sway. 



THE END. 



